Open Learning crosses paths with economic development
June 23, 2024
GOF releases two advanced manufacturing courses in the Philippines
Many leaders across the world hope to grow economies by leveraging workforce development and education. Open learning resources, like massive open online courses, have been seen as a useful tool in economic development for years, but a challenge has been crafting and curating them to meet local needs.
On June 24, 2024, the Global Opportunity Forum (GOF) and collaborators in the Philippines will release two online courses in advanced manufacturing for workers in the Philippines. The courses, made for a technical education program called AMDev, have been piloted and are ready to be distributed among Philippine manufacturers and educators across the country.
Since 2023, members of the GOF team have been codesigning an advanced-manufacturing curriculum for the AMDev program, which the international development agency USAID has funded with a $5-million grant for five years. The Unilab Foundation (a nonprofit associated with Unilab, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the Philippines) is implementing it.
The two courses that were released this past week will help a projected 10,000 manufacturing operators and technicians in the Philippines learn advanced-manufacturing skills. The focus learners for the courses, manufacturing workers in the Philippines, tend to have attained a high school degree. The courses teach skills that workers need to run intelligent production.
The first course, “Digital Thread,” teaches about product data throughout product life cycles. The course “makes it easier for workers to appreciate more complex Industry 4.0 technologies that Philippine companies are increasingly adopting, with the ultimate goal of remaining globally competitive,” said Dominic Barnachea (GOF Project Coordinator) in comments on the course. Barnachea led course design and creation for “Digital Thread.”
The second course, “Turning Issues Into Improvements With CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Actions),” teaches critical-thinking skills for common manufacturing problems, such as defects and malfunctions. In the course, students learn root-cause analysis among other problem-solving and planning techniques.
Both courses received excellent reviews during pilot testing. A trainer who took the pilot CAPA course praised it as “one of the most useful modules I participated in.” The courses are now available for learners throughout the AMDev community.
The advanced-manufacturing courses arrive at a propitious time for Philippines manufacturing. Philippines’ manufacturing contributed about 18 percent to national GDP in 2023 and grew at a rate of 6 percent, roughly on pace with the overall Philippines economy, which grew faster than all other Southeast Asian economies last year. Since at least 2014, analysts have been predicting that the Philippines economy will be lifted by a global manufacturing wave–as long as certain infrastructure and public service improvements, including workforce development and transportation, materialize.
Advanced manufacturing appears to be driving manufacturing exports in the Philippines. McKinsey and Company reports that semiconductors accounted for 45 percent of manufacturing exports in the Philippines in 2023. Commenting on current economic trends in the country, the consulting firm also predicts that increases in STEM knowledge and tech will drive manufacturing growth.
The GOF team is now creating three additional advanced manufacturing courses, which will be released by AMDev after September 2024. The GOF team has also recently expanded to include manufacturing-education experts from the MIT community. The new experts bring experience with manufacturing education at MIT and learning ecosystems for manufacturing in Massachusetts.
Michael Dedek is a frequent contributor to the Global Opportunity Forum. 