IT project to make PMMA first smart maritime school

PMMA operations will soon become fully digitalized

The state-run Philippine Merchant Marine Academy (PMMA) is eyeing to become the country’s first smart maritime campus.

PMMA is undertaking the P25-million “Smart Campus Project” that aims to upgrade the information and communications technology infrastructure of the country’s oldest maritime school, PMMA superintendent Commodore Joel Abutal recently announced.

The project is part of the special financial assistance program for state universities and colleges of the Commission on Higher Education. It provides a fiber-optic backbone in the PMMA complex to establish a stable IT infrastructure and reliable network as well as world-class internet connectivity.

The backbone will complement the intensive use of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies in the education and training of PMMA cadets in its San Narciso, Zambales campus.

The project, which will be ready in time for the first semester of the academic year 2022 to 2023, will also improve PMMA’s present Learning Management System.

It provides a fiber-optic backbone in the PMMA complex.

Upon completion of the project within the year, Abutal said PMMA operations — from recruitment to graduation, including all other operations such as finances, and the competency management system of the cadets, among others — will be fully digitalized.

Part of the project is the PMMA Information Management System which is already 65 percent complete, Capt. Reynold Sabay, assistant superintendent for Academics, Training, Research and Extension of PMMA, said.

“We will start piloting some of the modules this September. All documents are digitalized, and part of the system will use blockchain technology,” according to Sabay.

“Some of its features have already been piloted. For example, the online entrance exam with real-time results was already piloted,” he added.

This means that graduates of senior high school aspiring to become a PMMA cadet do not have to go to designated testing centers. Instead, they may take the online entrance exams anywhere in the Philippines.

“It’s release will make us the model (smart university) in the country,” Sabay said.