The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (OVCAA) holds Research Conversations every Friday at the UPOU Sandbox, Los Baños, Laguna. The forum serves as a venue for research collaboration and discussion among UPOU stakeholders. For this year, starting January 2017, the research conversations have been focusing on the 12 flagship programs of UPOU which can be categorized under four key areas: Teaching, Learning and Research (Saliksik, InnovaTE, FLEx, and @ccessUP); Public Service (Mission RA 10650, openUP, UPOU Connected, and PLAZA); Governance (e-FA 3.0, CARe-UPOU, and TAYO); and Quality Assurance. Through the research conversations, UPOU stakeholders get to brainstorm and develop research activities into each of the flagship programs. These have been yielding not just research initiatives within UPOU, but also research-based public service initiatives for the benefit of communities outside the University. This is in line with the University’s view of public service not as an isolated function of the University but a function that cuts across its teaching, research, and extension activities.
