Design of a Blended Learning ICT Education Program for

Undergraduate Students in Asia-Paciﬁc

Based on Communities of Practice

Shun Arima

, Marcos Sadao Maekawa

, Noriatsu Kudo

and Keiko Okawa

Cyber Civilization Research Center, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

APNIC Foundation, Brisbane, Australia

Keywords:

Communities of Practice, ICT Education, ICT Careers.

Abstract:

This position paper reports on the design of the Asia Paciﬁc Internet Engineering (APIE) Program: an ICT

education program for undergraduate students in the Asia-Paciﬁc region that utilize multiple resources and

learning content from existing ICT-related Communities of Practice (CoP). APIE program consists of four

components: self-paced online courses, synchronous online sessions, an onsite camp, and an internship. The

program structure has been strategically designed to position APIE not only as an online courseware for

knowledge acquirement but anticipating its potential to become a new CoP that fulﬁlls the gaps between the

current ICT education and the expectation from academia and industry. This study ﬁrst introduces the program

concept and describes the design of components and the implementation plans. It also presents preliminary

results from the ﬁrst pilot runs of the program.

1 INTRODUCTION

In May 2011, in a report by Frank La Rue, the United

Nations Human Rights Council expressed the view

that Internet access should be recognized as a human

right (United Nations, 2011). The Internet is the cor-

nerstone of our lives today. Therefore, the education

and training of engineers who develop and support the

Internet are essential for all countries and regions. In

particular, innovations in information and communi-

cation technology (ICT) and other industries and ser-

vices that utilize ICT are making an increasingly sig-

niﬁcant contribution to the economic growth of devel-

oped and developing countries (Ani

c et al., 2016).

According to the OECD, people with the high-end

skills needed to invent and apply ICT are in demand

worldwide (OECD, 2016). On the other hand, IMF

predicts that by 2030 there will be a global shortage of

more than 85 million technical workers (IMF, 2019).

To overcome the current shortage of ICT profes-

sionals, higher education institutions in each coun-

try need to design ICT higher education program that

leads to ICT careers for young people (Ani

c et al.,

2016). In contrast, researchers on ICT education and

ICT careers reported that conventional engineering

education has a gap between the skills learned in edu-

cation and the skills required in the industry (Garousi

et al., 2019; Freitas et al., 2018). There is also a

lack of triggers for students to think about ICT ca-

reers (Calitz et al., 2011; Ani

c et al., 2016).

Communities of Practice (CoP) is one of the con-

cepts to solve such educational problems (Glaze-

Crampes, 2020; Carrino and Gerace, 2016; Gilbuena

et al., 2015). Wenger proposed the concept of CoP as

“groups of people who share a concern or a passion

for something they do and learn how to do it better

as they interact regularly” (Wenger, 1999). He states

that the school is not a self-contained closed world

for students to acquire knowledge to apply outside,

but rather a part of a broader learning system. He ar-

gues that connecting the student’s experience to actual

practice through a wider community that crosses the

school wall is essential when applying CoP to the ed-

ucational ﬁeld (Wenger, 1999). In other words, learn-

ing is not simply imparting knowledge but is a process

of social interaction with “masters” who have more

knowledge and know-how and peers in a speciﬁc con-

text. Hence in communities, we can learn a lot.

However, it is not easy to design a CoP for ICT ed-

ucation in collaboration with multiple universities and

industries beyond the boundaries of an educational in-

stitution or area, or nation. Also, attempts to design a

Arima, S., Maekawa, M., Kudo, N. and Okawa, K.

Design of a Blended Learning ICT Education Program for Undergraduate Students in Asia-Paciﬁc Based on Communities of Practice.

DOI: 10.5220/0011997700003470

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2023) - Volume 2, pages 581-588

ISBN: 978-989-758-641-5; ISSN: 2184-5026

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

581

CoP intentionally can miss the spontaneous nature of

CoP (Pyrko et al., 2017).

CoP is often overlooked, but it’s all around

us (Wenger, 1999). Rather than designing a new CoP

from scratch, we can expect to overcome these prob-

lems by designing an educational program that uti-

lizes the existing multiple CoP and their resource. In

addition, the educational program can be expected to

be sustainable through collaboration among multiple

universities and educational institutions. But as far

as we know, there is no research on the design of edu-

cational programs or communities of practice that uti-

lize existing multiple communities and their resources

in a wide area that transcends national borders.

Our research team has been implementing the

School on Internet Asia (SOI Asia) Project

since

2001 with the aim of establishing a wide-area Internet

education platform in Asia. As of 2022, this project

has 28 university and research institute partners in 13

countries in Asia-Paciﬁc and continues to carry out

practical activities. In 2022, we started a new initia-

tive: Asia Paciﬁc Internet Engineering (APIE) pro-

gram

, starting from this and related communities.

Developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership led

by SOI Asia project that includes APNIC

, AITAC

and WIDE project

, APIE was inspired by the con-

cepts of CoP (Fig.1). The program utilizes resources

from existing Internet engineering communities in the

multi-regions. The initial idea was to curate best prac-

tices of ICT education rather than creating new learn-

ing content from the ground up.

This paper describes the design and ﬁrst imple-

mentation stages of the APIE program, an ICT ed-

ucation initiative for higher education students that

aims to foster the next generation of IT professionals.

APIE looks at the need to enhance roles and capac-

ity for ICT-related careers in academia, industry, and

Research and Educational Networks (RENs) in Asia

Paciﬁc. The program structure comprises four com-

ponents: self-paced online courses (APIE Online),

10 synchronous online sessions (APIE e-Workshop),

a one-week onsite camp (APIE Camp), and an in-

ternship (APIE Internship). Each component will be

described in Chapter 3. They aim to bring together

students from different backgrounds, ICT education-

related scholars, and IT professionals to collaborate

for learning and practice actively.

This paper will contribute to ICT education and

CoP domains with knowledge about educational

https://www.soi.asia/

https://apie.soi.asia/

https://www.apnic.net/

https://aitac.jp/english/

https://www.wide.ad.jp/index\ e.html

methods that utilize existing CoP in ICT education

and ICT career education.

Figure 1: Multi-stakeholders involved in APIE design.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Communities of Practice

The concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) was

ﬁrst mentioned in Lave and Wenger’s book about Sit-

uated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991). They coined

the term in their study of apprenticeship as a learn-

ing model. Apprenticeships are usually thought of

as student-teacher relationships, but they are actu-

ally CoPs of a more complex set of social relation-

ships (Wenger, 1999).

CoP can happen in online communities as well as

onsite communities (Johnson, 2001). New technolog-

ical developments have increased the beneﬁts enjoyed

by CoP members by facilitating long-distance com-

munication. Voskoglou argues that web-based virtual

CoP is a very promising tool, especially in developing

countries (Voskoglou, 2019).

It has been reported that the use of CoP and com-

munity learning has a positive effect not only on ICT

but also on STEM learning. STEM Learning Commu-

nities research aimed at recruiting, developing, and

retaining students in STEM ﬁelds and increasing stu-

dent achievement, graduation rates, and participation

in STEM ﬁelds after graduation (Dagley et al., 2016;

Inkelas, 2011). Carrino and Gerace reported that stu-

dent participation in a STEM-based learning com-

munity improved aspects comprising academic self-

regulation, STEM identity, metacognition, and self-

efﬁcacy (Carrino and Gerace, 2016). A paper exam-

ining four national CoPs developed to expand STEM

pedagogy reform efforts in the U.S. found that phi-

losophy and personal interactions (e.g., peer-to-peer

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582

learning) were most important in the design of CoPs

for engagement and outcomes (Kezar et al., 2017).

There are Professional Learning Communities

(PLC) with a concept similar to CoP. Communi-

ties of practice are not necessarily aimed at learn-

ing (Wenger, 1999). In contrast, PLC are similar to

communities of practice in that they are groups of

professionals who share a common goal. but have a

positive impact on students learning, and outcomes

are differentiated mainly by their speciﬁc goal of pro-

viding (Glaze-Crampes, 2020; Stoll et al., 2006). In

particular, most PLC studies are set in teachers and

schools (Stoll et al., 2006), and they deal with more

limited situations than the concept of CoP.

Glaze-Crampes argues that communities of prac-

tice are generally oriented towards sharing culture

and knowledge within the community, but by shifting

their focus to student learning, they become profes-

sional learning communities, which could be a vehi-

cle for change in STEM education (Glaze-Crampes,

2020). She also stresses the need to share existing

discipline cultures in new ways and to build interdis-

ciplinary communities for the beneﬁt and growth of

students joining the discipline. Our research also at-

tempts to design APIE as an actual learning program.

According to Leiner, the Internet is as much a col-

lection of technologies as it is a collection of commu-

nities (Leiner et al., 2009). Furthermore, the Internet’s

success is mainly due to meeting the community’s ba-

sic needs and leveraging it effectively to advance the

infrastructure. This community spirit has a long his-

tory, beginning with the early days of Advanced Re-

search Projects Agency NETwork (ARPANET). Even

today, engineering communities like Internet Archi-

tecture Board (IAB) and Internet Engineering Task

Force (IETF) contribute to developing and maintain-

ing the Internet.

Taking advantage of the characteristics and the di-

versity of ICT communities as CoP, the APIE team

aimed to design an educational program that curates

and adapts resources from existing communities of

practice rather than creating new and original ones.

2.2 ICT Education

The rapidly changing ICT landscape in recent years

has meant that educators are under constant pressure

to update their curriculum and course materials, and

it has been suggested that because degree programs

are updated so frequently. students (potential stu-

dents) may enter ICT degrees without a clear under-

standing of what it means to study ICT, resulting in

unsatisfactory educational experiences for some stu-

dents (Sheard and Carbone, 2007).

According to Green et al.’s report, ICT profession-

als are no longer just technical experts and the ICT

industry now needs workers with multidisciplinary

skills (Green et al., 2013). Regarding the skills re-

quired by the ICT industry, many studies investigate

the gap between the skills taught in university edu-

cation and that skills (Gilbuena et al., 2015; Garousi

et al., 2019; Freitas et al., 2018). A review paper

investigating the gap between the skills learned in

university education and those needed in the indus-

try in the ﬁeld of software engineering showed that

hard skills (domain knowledge and technical skills)

are not enough, and soft skills (team and interper-

sonal skills) have become even more critical in recent

years (Garousi et al., 2019).

Studies by software developers working in com-

panies highlight the need for undergraduates to gain

real software development experience developing so-

lutions to real problems in a team software develop-

ment environment (Craig et al., 2018; Sherriff and

Heckman, 2018).

2.3 ICT Careers

Not limited to ICT, as a general story about careers,

unlike the stable employment and stable organizations

of the 20th century, the digital revolution of the 21st

century has led to a new social placement of work in

which temporary staff and temporary projects replace

permanent employees (Kalleberg et al., 2000).

These changes have also prompted university ca-

reer centers to change their approach to students and

have strengthened the movement to shift career cen-

ters from job placement agencies to conduits that pro-

mote connections (build human relationships) (Dey

and Cruzvergara, 2014). Such career trends in recent

years suggest that the importance of communities and

human networks is increasing in career development.

For example, Hughes et al. point to networking as one

of the hallmarks of effective career education prac-

tices (Hughes et al., 2016).

The meta-analysis of ICT careers research by

Ani

c et al. anticipate that it will be possible to sup-

port further the preparation of graduates for the transi-

tion into society. Furthermore, these activities should

be carried out in collaboration with all stakeholders,

including faculty and non-faculty, industry, profes-

sional bodies, and other supporting agencies (Ani

et al., 2016). ICT undergraduates are generally un-

familiar with and lack information about current ICT

careers and job descriptions, and lack awareness of

ICT careers (Calitz et al., 2011). Calitz et al. state that

universities must encourage students to explore new

ICT careers opportunities and that ICT professionals

Design of a Blended Learning ICT Education Program for Undergraduate Students in Asia-Paciﬁc Based on Communities of Practice

583

in industry should provide valuable information, such

as giving guest lectures.

A study of ICT professionals in Malaysia found

that high career adaptability is one of the critical as-

pects of survival, especially in the ICT industry (Omar

and Noordin, 2013). Career adaptability here means

“the attitudes, competencies, and behaviors that in-

dividuals use in ﬁtting themselves to work that suits

them” (Savickas, 2005), the ability to respond to

change and plan for contingencies. The paper also ar-

gues that such career adaptability cannot be acquired

overnight and that it is necessary to develop it consis-

tently from the early stages of higher education insti-

tutions (Omar and Noordin, 2013).

3 PROGRAM DESIGN

The APIE program design is led by SOI Asia project

core members from Keio University in Japan. The

program has been developed in a multi-stakeholder

partnership with institutions in the Asia Paciﬁc and

utilizes resources from existing Internet engineering

communities in the region. AITAC is an IT human

resource development organization based in Japan.

WIDE project is a Japan-based international IT con-

sortium responsible for the development and spread

of the Internet. APNIC is the internet registry orga-

nization for the Asia Paciﬁc that supports and pro-

vides capacity-building initiatives for IT profession-

als in the region.

Initial discussions about the course concept started

in 2021. APIE was inspired by the concepts of com-

munities of practice (CoP); it curates best practices

and resources of ICT education and adapts them to

a blended learning environment. The design team

explored different learning environments to provide

learners with a sense of community through a blended

learning experience online and onsite.

The program structure comprises four compo-

nents: self-paced online courses (APIE Online), 10

synchronous online sessions (APIE e-Workshop), a

one-week onsite camp (APIE Camp), and an intern-

ship (APIE Internship). Each component described

below was designed to stimulate collaboration be-

tween learners, ICT education-related scholars, and

IT professionals.

The timeline for one cycle of this program starts

with the self-paced online courses and the syn-

chronous online sessions held fortnightly.

After completing those components, participants

can apply for APIE Camp. It is a week-long onsite

training program to deploy enterprise-level networks

by themselves to make their knowledge more practi-

cal and valuable. APIE Internship will be provided in

collaboration with stakeholders in related communi-

ties for those who completed all other components.

The ﬁrst run of components, pilot versions of

APIE Online and APIE Workshop, started in May

2022. Although the last session of the APIE e-

Workshop was held in September 2022, APIE Online

is still being produced and ongoing. Therefore, in this

paper, we report on the design plan of the entire pro-

gram and the progress of part of the pilot program that

has been implemented until September 2022.

3.1 Self-Paced Online Courses

The self-paced online courses consisted of two 4- to

5-week courses at different levels described below

(Fig.2).

The ﬁrst course, named “Understanding the Inter-

net,” is an introductory course of 4 weeks, partially

based on the online course “The Internet,”

streamed

in 2014 on Gacco

. Targeting a wider audience, the

main aim was to broaden learners’ thoughts towards

the Internet and create opportunities for reﬂection on

how they can contribute to the future of the Internet

regardless of their academic background.

Learners are guided through the foundations of the

Internet, its history, the design philosophy behind the

technology, and global governance, among other top-

ics, so they can acquire a clear vision of everyone’s

role in cyberspace and the importance of engineering

for improving Internet infrastructure. The course in-

cludes theory, videos, readings, and introductory ex-

ercises so students can learn how to evaluate inter-

net connectivity, investigate simple network problems

and even debate security-related issues (Tab.1).

The second one, “Operating the internet,” was

structured as a 5-week course focusing on practical

skills. The content comprises network technology-

related topics from the physical layer (layer 2) to the

application layers (layer 3), such as Ethernet, rout-

ing, DNS operation, and network design. Through

theory and hands-on exercises, learners can experi-

ence situations like designing and deploying small

networks and equipment conﬁguration. By the end of

this course, learners are expected to be able to iden-

tify and solve problems in network operation and de-

bate network security risks (Tab.1). The course mate-

rial was developed based on existing training courses

for network engineers created by AITAC and APNIC.

The hands-on practices run in virtual laboratories pro-

vided by the same organizations.

www.wide.ad.jp/About/report/pdf2014/part06.pdf

https://lms.gacco.org

CSEDU 2023 - 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

584

Figure 2: Self-paced online courses’ each weeks syllabus (Left: Course1, Right: Course2).

Table 1: Learning outcomes of self-paced online course.

Course 1: Understanding the Internet

• Explain what is the Internet

• Explain how the Internet is running

• Describe the technology behind the Internet

• Discuss the importance of global collaboration to make

the Internet

• Discuss the individual responsibility for the future Inter-

net

• Discuss the future of the Internet

• Evaluate your internet connectivity

• Investigate the network problem in your house

• Debate privacy and security issues related to the Internet

• Explore your career in the Internet industry

Course 2: Operating the Internet

• Design and deploy a small network

• Identify problems and ﬁx them in daily network opera-

tions

• Apply conﬁguration on network devices for network de-

ployment

• Debate network security risk and protection on daily net-

work operation

• Apply basic conﬁguration on services running on the

Linux server for network operation

A signiﬁcant design improvement added to the

original courses is the introduction of a navigator who

guides learners through different topics and content.

For this role, an actual graduate student was chosen to

shorten the distance and create more connections with

young learners. In addition to explaining concepts re-

lated to the main topics, the navigator also interviews

professionals and invites learners to the exercises.

The courses were structured following Future-

Learn

platform guidelines (Fig.2). The content is

divided into chapters called “weeks,” and each week

has sub-chapters denominated “steps.” The steps can

accommodate content in different formats (articles,

https://www.futurelearn.com

photos, illustrations, animations, and videos, among

others) depending on the needs of the learning objec-

tives. A summary closes each week with a relevant

article or an online discussion to stimulate communi-

cation among learners.

As previously mentioned, the course content was

developed based on redesigning existing materials

from other courses. Although online courses tend to

keep learners attached to a single platform to avoid

dispersion, this program stimulates learners to go to

different platforms in several moments. By doing

so, they can take advantage of the diversity of learn-

ing tools and environments online. The main learn-

ing journey starts on FutureLearn. For virtual labs

exercises, learners are guided to go to the APNIC

Academy platform

and come back to share and con-

tinue their learning. The course also has a dedicated

Padlet

for sharing online discussions, in addition to

the comment ﬁelds on FutureLearn. Links to materi-

als and readings from different sources are also intro-

duced throughout the courses to complement learn-

ing. After completing their tasks, learners return to

FutureLearn to continue their learning path.

3.2 Synchronous Online Sessions

The second component of the APIE program blended

learning model is a series of synchronous online ses-

sions called e-Workshop (Fig.3). Conducted every

two weeks, these sessions offer learners a variety of

content that complements what students learned in

the self-paced course. This component works as a

community-building opportunity where learners can

learn directly from IT professionals and expand their

vision about different careers in ICT ﬁelds.

The e-Workshop series was designed to match the

content provided by the self-paced courses. The ﬁrst

four sessions correspond to the ﬁrst self-paced course

(Understanding the Internet), and guests are profes-

sionals from different ﬁelds such as internet service

https://academy.apnic.net/

https://padlet.com/

Design of a Blended Learning ICT Education Program for Undergraduate Students in Asia-Paciﬁc Based on Communities of Practice

585

Figure 3: Scenes from the e-Workshop (Left: Guest keynote, Right: real-time lecture for the virtual lab).

providers, internet governance, telecoms, and mem-

bers of RENs, among others. Guests shared their

personal experiences and knowledge and challenged

learners to reﬂect on what they expect and how they

can contribute to the future of the Internet.

Sessions 5 to 10 were synchronized with the sec-

ond course (Operating the Internet). Although it fo-

cused on hands-on activities with IT professionals,

the syllabus included mobile networking, which was

not in the original course curriculum.

3.3 Onsite Camp

The onsite camp component has been designed as a

project-based intensive activity to allow learners to

consolidate their learning outcomes from the online

courses and strengthen the community-building as-

pect of the program. Learners who have completed

both self-paced and synchronous session components

are eligible to participate in the activity.

The full 5-day program’s syllabus (Tab.2) was de-

signed as a series of daily mission cards—from vir-

tualization and DNS to cloud computing—aiming to

help learners put their network design and implemen-

tation skills into practice. In addition to practical

and theoretical skills leverage, the camp design aims

to provide learners with opportunities to collaborate

with others, meet and interact with professionals (lec-

tures from AITAC and APNIC and mentors), and visit

relevant local companies and organizations such as

data centers and internet service providers.

3.4 Internship

One of the program’s objectives is to build connec-

tions between academia, the network and Internet in-

dustry, and RENs in the region. Although faculties

and professionals understand the need to improve and

strengthen those paths, they agree that students should

be more exposed to practical skills before graduating.

According to initial discussions, learners who com-

pleted all other three components are eligible to be a

Table 2: Content of APIE Camp.

Day Content

Day1

• Kick-off and ice-breaking session

• Network Deployment

– Network design and conﬁguration for

new campus (L2 and L3)

Day2

• Virtualization

– Work with rack-mount servers

– Deploy hypervisor on the server

– Install Linux on a virtual machine

– Set up Web/DNS servers

Day3

• DNS

– Authoritative DNS for campus subdo-

main

– Full-service resolver

Day4

• Cloud computing

Day5

• Site visit (Datacenter, SOC, etc.)

• Summary of the course

candidate for the internship program. Internship pro-

grams are expected to play a crucial role in helping

students broaden their views about their careers and

reﬂect on the contributions they can make to build the

future of the Internet. Internship component design is

in the early stages of conceptualization.

4 PRELIMINARY RESULTS

APIE program started calling for participants among

SOI Asia partner universities in February 2022. The

ﬁrst run was conducted beginning in May to Septem-

ber. However, due to changes in the self-paced course

component, Course 2 - Operating the Internet is still

ongoing and scheduled to end by late March 2023.

A group of 35 students from Japan, Indonesia, and

Bangladesh attended the ﬁrst run of online courses.

The preliminary results described below were col-

lected from three different sources: an online survey

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586

with students after the end of APIE Course 1, obser-

vations from the design team, and feedback from the

advisory and curriculum committees during a review

session held in November 2022, between the end of

the APIE e-Workshop and the APIE Camp.

4.1 Feedback from Learners

An online survey was conducted with learners who

ﬁnished Course 1, but only six responded. Despite

the limited sampling, the results revealed interest-

ing feedback from participants. Regarding the course

content, respondents considered the volume and con-

tent of Course 1 favorable, in contrast with the second

half of the course (Weeks 3 and 4) described as “long

and challenging to complete.” The program promptly

set up ofﬁce hours to support students’ progress. Ac-

cording to the staff’s observation, a considerable part

of the learning was facilitated by a team of teaching

assistants (TAs) formed by graduate students.

Some respondents mentioned that their English

communication skills were at the beginner level, in-

dicating that they likely faced challenges in absorbing

the content provided. The APIE core team observed

that learners prefer text-based communication for ask-

ing questions. Some used direct messages, making it

challenging for other mentors to track all questions.

This indicates that learners needed language support

or even wished to study in their native language.

The team of TAs played an essential role in sup-

porting both asynchronous and synchronous learn-

ing. TAs communicated with learners using different

channels such as Slack and FutureLearn and helped

them keep track of their learning activities. Since

most learners were originally from Indonesia, an In-

donesian TA was hired to reduce language barriers.

Respondents also expressed approval for the so-

cial learning aspect of the APIE program. One men-

tioned, “This (program) is the best online learning ex-

perience of my life because I have never studied with

people outside my country.” Others highlighted the

talk by a guest speaker about his carrier, saying that

“it gives me motivation.”

4.2 APIE Review Session

In addition to the feedback from participants, an

APIE Review Session was held in November 2022 in

Manila, and attendees were members of the APIE ad-

visory committee, APIE curriculum committee, APIE

core team, and other related staff.

The course’s overall concept, program structure,

content curation and production, and the ﬁrst imple-

mentation run got positive feedback from committee

members. Attendees also extended special approval

for Course 1 for its potential to invite all internet users

to learn about the fundamentals of the Internet.

Several points for course improvement were also

raised. The ﬁrst was the need to deﬁne a more

straightforward methodology to assess students’ skill

levels after completing the program to ensure the pro-

gram meets the industry’s requirements.

Another point emphasized was the necessity to

strengthen connections and collaboration with the pri-

vate sector. Attendees mentioned that this could ﬁll

the gap between the program content and the required

skills for the IT industry. The third point raised was

the importance of supporting students to access the

workplace into network jobs through this program.

Finally, all learners who successfully ﬁnished both

online courses are male students from two Indone-

sian universities. This shows that improvements can

be done to the program’s visibility to attract a wider

range of students and increase cultural diversity and

gender balance among learners.

5 CONCLUSION

The results from the ﬁrst run of APIE Courses and

APIE e-Workshop indicated that the program has the

potential to achieve its initial goals. However, it also

revealed room for improvements that have already

started to take place. The online courses are being

reviewed to shrink the gap between courses 1 and 2

and overcome language barriers. The program cur-

riculum will adopt a problem-based approach that will

give more substance to learning outcomes. A more

detailed course evaluation is on planning and is ex-

pected to be conducted after the ﬁrst implementation

of the camp and internship components.

The onsite camp component is expected to allow

learners to consolidate their learning outcomes and

strengthen the community-building aspect of the pro-

gram. The pilot version of the camp has been planned

to start in February 2023, and 13 learners have already

conﬁrmed their participation.

Regarding the internship component, the APIE

team is in conversations with potential sponsors (or-

ganizations, enterprises, etc.), which will welcome

learners to the last phase of the APIE program. The

internship is expected to start in mid-2023.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The APIE Program and this research are supported

by the APNIC Foundation. The authors express their

Design of a Blended Learning ICT Education Program for Undergraduate Students in Asia-Paciﬁc Based on Communities of Practice

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deepest gratitude to the organization, all other institu-

tions and individuals who contributed to this research.

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