Background of the Study

Guided with the issuance of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), particularly on CHED Memorandum Order No. 30 series of 2021 contains herein the Revised Policies, Standards, and Guidelines for Bachelor of Science in Customs Administration as hereby precedes in accordance to pertinent provisions of Republic Act (RA) No. 7722 – Higher Education Act of 1994. The BSCA program must be responsive and consistent with international customs, trade and supply chain practices. With this, a shift to learning competency-based standards/outcomes-based education must be considered and expected of the BSCA graduates. According to Section 8 of this CHED Memorandum, the BSCA curriculum is made up of a minimum of 145 units covers the General Education (GE), National Service Training Program (NSTP), Physical Education (PE), Common Business & Management Education (CBME) Courses, Special Business Education Courses (SBEC), Professional Courses, Elective Courses (EC), Research, & Internship/Practicum.

Part of the BSCA students must undergo an Internship/Practicum for at least 300 hours as this internship program integrates the theory and knowledge of the course content with the application of principles and practices in the work environment. In this course, the BSCA students were allowed to apply the theories learned in school to actual work experiences where they would find learning cohesion between school and employment. With this, it also helps the students to expand their learning options beyond the traditional classroom environment.

Getting to the idea that the Internship/Practicum of the 3^rd year BSCA students was not possible to grant the students to be in the field of customs and trade industry due to existing global crisis – COVID19 pandemic. In this way, the Holy Cross of Davao College and the BSCA Program finds their way to combat these circumstances and formulate solutions to this dilemma that we are facing at this moment. Based on Section 15, the third paragraph of the CHED Memorandum No. 20 – 2001, the Internship/Practicum’s focus, substance, and kind of approach will only vary depending on the Higher Educational Institution. The decision on the nature, location and activities of the Internship course is arrived at from discussion and agreement made among the school administrators, faculty advisor, practicum site supervisor, and the students.

Since no pertaining issuances coming from the government, especially from the IATF that granted the Interns to be employed in different institutions, and the CHED was not advising the HEIs to facilitate this kind of set-up due to pandemic and health restrictions with IATF, this is also coinciding to the CHED & DOH Joint Memorandum Circular No. 004, series of 2021 herby stated the guidelines on Limited Face-to-Face classes of all programs of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in areas under Alert Levels System for COVID-19 Response. This issuance is stated under the General Guidelines as limited face-to-face is not mandatory. For the Off-Campus Activities, such as Internship/Practicum, it says to the issuance that these activities were not permitted to reject as the LGU shall proactively coordinate with the HEIs to ensure ease of doing business and effective government service policy. The flow of the BSCA program it was resulting from adapting the digitalization of the new learning environment and providing instructional materials and learning logs to the trainees.

Truly it was hard for them to say that they wanted to have an off-campus learning experience as they acquire different ideas and experiences that we may not be able to face in the four corners of the classroom, but still, the health and safety must prevail as the Internship/Practicum program has only been transferred into learning sessions through the use of the digitalization and hybrid learning environment.