It is an undisputed fact that one of the legacies that the late Dr. Anthony C. Lee had left is the series of education caravans that were held in various parts of the country. These were held in Miriam College (NCR), Central Mindanao State University (Mindanao Chapter), University of Northeastern Philippines (Bicol Chapter), Mariano Marcos State University (Northern Luzon Chapter) and St. Paul University-Iloilo (Visayas Chapter).

The education caravan team was composed of the late President himself Dr. Anthony Lee who primed the caravan by giving a significant overview on issues on pedagogy and in Microbiology education. Dr. Esperanza Cabrera gave practical tips to the educators on teaching microbiology. In order to augment lack of resources in the laboratory, Dr. Supachai Basit’s talk had focused on maximizing technology in Microbiology education. He also pointed out that constructivism could be an important pedagogical philosophy to foster meaningful learning among the students. Prof. Howell Ho discussed issues on valid assessment and evaluation of students. And lastly, Prof. Thaddeus Carvajal concluded the caravan synthesizing the issues by analyzing positive outcomes.

After the presentation of all the speakers, open forums among the educators were conducted. Various issues were raised based on the experience of the educators. These could be categorized into several themes such as lack of teaching resources, strategies for teaching new generation of students, the need to address cognitive overloading of students, high failure rate of students, lack of interest in Microbiology and the dilemma of balancing institutional standards and students capabilities. The interactions were very lively as almost all the educators were very eager to share their experiences. It was also very noteworthy that there was a convergence of experienced and budding educators. The former shared their experiences and wisdom to the budding teachers. As for the lack of resources, networking among the members was seen as one of the solutions where teachers from different institution could possibly share resources. Various strategies were also shared by some of the participants to entice students’ interest in Microbiology.

Thus, the education caravan could be considered as a successful project f Dr. Anthony C. Lee. Its primordial objective; which is to gather Filipino Microbiology educators to share experiences was achieved. Such feat is significant since learning from the experience of one another could enhance the pedagogical skills of any educators in general.

SA Basit