This study looks at the 2014 Mayon Volcano eruption to identify possible factors that contribute to the actions that people (local authorities/officials, community leaders, and residents) take during an eruptive period. We used qualitative analysis to examine interviews of people who experienced the August–December 2014 Mayon Volcano unrest, to determine the nature of people’s understanding of hazards and risks, their decision-making, and response process. The thematic analysis shows that residents reacted to the information given to them in several ways- they evacuated when ordered (mandatory), chose not to evacuate for various reasons (e.g. they did not believe they are in danger citing experiences, inconvenience in evacuation sites, etc.), and evacuated even when not ordered to (voluntary). The local officials and community leaders were asked about their views on the possible reasons or motivations as to why residents would evacuate, and common themes that emerged were fear emanating from the experience of past eruptions, obeying the order to evacuate because it is the law, and order from provincial authorities (setting aside personal opinion on the state of the volcano based on experiential knowledge), and the potential to receive relief goods for those who are economically in need. This paper also looks at the challenges to local officials when an eruptive episode occurs- but the event falls short of the expected typical explosive behavior from the volcano. This study argues for people’s experiential knowledge as an important factor in shaping views about hazards and risks that leads to the decision-making of individuals and its importance in risk communication strategies.
This paper highlights the affordances of technology in building the ASEAN community through graduate education. Specifically, the paper shall focus on the development and the delivery of the ASEAN Studies Graduate Program being offered online by the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU). The program hopes to develop graduates who can contribute to an enhanced and heightened ASEAN community’s consciousness and awareness of its ties of history, culture and bound by a common regional identity but celebrating diversity. The paper shall share the development of the program structure and of the course materials that was accomplished through the collaboration of five open universities in the ASEAN region bound by a philosophy that the commonly shared ASEAN aspiration and dynamics could only be well understood by the ASEAN peoples themselves through a system of knowledge and body of research and repository of data and information on the region in its individual member nations and in its collective character as a regional entity. Further the paper shall share the delivery of the program that is framed by the Open and Distance eLearning or ODeL philosophy characterized by openness, inclusion, resource sharing, access and equity of open learning and learner-centeredness, flexibility, active learning, interactivity, ubiquity, connectivity and constructivism view of e-learning. The paper shall conclude with the challenges of a graduate program within an ODeL framework.
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