Teaching Ethics in the Time of Covid
Written by Mr. Jairus Espiritu and Ms. Marielle Zosa
Last 16 November 2020, in the aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses, the UP Department of Philosophy together with Mindanao State University-General Santos (MSU-GenSan) organized the first nationwide workshop on Community of Inquiry (CoI) in the context of online learning. The webinar was entitled Teaching Ethics in the Time of COVID: Using Community of Inquiry as Framework. Around 220 people registered in the event from all over the Philippines, with 109 distinct organizations. 70% of the organizations came from Luzon, 11.02% came from the Visayas, and 11.92% came from Mindanao.
The webinar was a whole-day affair, opened with the opening remarks of the project head, Dr. Lumberto Mendoza of UP Diliman. It was followed by a lecture from the pioneer of Philosophy for Children in the Philippines, Dr. Zosimo Lee. Talking about the challenges of distance learning in the conduct of CoI, he introduced the participants to its practice. He was then followed by another lecture from Prof. Aleta Villanueva of UP Open University on the use of CoI in distance learning. Prof. Aleli Caraan of UP Manila capped the morning session by talking about CoI using text-based discussions on Facebook.
Before the lunch break, Dr. Lumberto Mendoza gave a brief talk on the use of memes as stimulus for the conduct of CoI. It was followed by a breakout session where they were asked to conduct a CoI on one of the memes presented by Dr. Mendoza. The groups then shared their insights of the plenary in the reporting session that immediately followed. The sharing was followed by a talk on the preparedness of MSU-GenSan on CoI by Prof. Marielle Sundiang of UP Diliman. The talk was followed by a question-and-answer portion. Ending the whole-day webinar were the closing remarks of Dr. Wilfred Bidad, dean of MSU-GenSan.
Dr. Zosimo Lee’s talk is posted on the official Youtube channel of the Department of Philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGWxmE7_mXw. For more updates on our upcoming events and webinars, you may visit our official website: http://pages.upd.edu.ph/philosophy.