Students want online classes suspended

MANILA, Philippines — Fearing their online classes may be affected by uncertain internet connection, a students’ group urged the government to suspend classes until the maintenance work on a trans-Pacific internet cable network is completed.

The Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Spark) asked the government to cancel all online classes and order school administrators not to assign homework from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30 just like when tropical storms or typhoons hinder learners and teachers from coming to school.

Spark said this “coming storm” will only expose the lack of sufficient ICT (Information and communications technology) infrastructure to conduct online classes in the country.

“A storm is coming, and unlike tropical storms, it’s going to affect all students, teachers and even school administrators in the entire country. We are charging head first into a major educational technology catastrophe unseen before [President] Duterte himself doesn’t act with due diligence to mitigate impacts on students and teachers alike,” the group said in a statement.

In an advisory on Sept. 23, PLDT said that Asia-America Gateway (AGG), the operator of the international trans-Pacific submarine cable system used by the local internet provider, would conduct emergency maintenance work on its fiberoptic cables in the waters of Hong Kong from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30.

AGG, which stretches some 20,000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean, provides internet connectivity to the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Guam, Hawaii and the United States.

But internet service providers PLDT and Smart assured their customers that they would still be able to access their work and learning platforms despite the emergency maintenance work.

PLDT said they would be using “equally robust international cable systems” to reroute affected internet traffic and ensure uninterrupted services and users would still be able to make video calls for work or access schools’ online learning platforms.

Despite assurances from local internet providers, several academic institutions have already suspended online classes from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30.

Far Eastern University campuses in Manila, Makati, and Cavite announced that they will only conduct asynchronous classes and all graded submissions during this period will be rescheduled.

At the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the Faculty of Engineering suspended both synchronous and asynchronous classes, while the Faculty of Arts and Letters will hold “reasonable or minimal” asynchronous activities until Sept. 30

The UST College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Mindanao, Assumption College of Davao, University of Perpetual Health System, Asian College-Quezon City and Technological University of the Philippines also suspended synchronous classes during this period.