Village Connect
Asia Pacific College (APC), a proud member of the SM Group, recently turned a national milestone into a powerful classroom without walls, as its students joined forces with NAMFREL to support the 2025 midterm elections through real-time data analytics and monitoring. This collaboration gave students not only a hands-on application of their technical skills but also a chance to engage directly with the democratic process.
With over 3 million first-time and Gen Z voters participating in the 2025 elections, the opportunity to contribute to transparency and integrity came alive for 31 APC students. Enrolled in Analytics and AI courses and part of the Junior Philippine Computer Society, these students were deployed as real-time data analysts during vote transmission. Mentored by experts from NAMFREL and APC faculty from both academia and industry, they became integral to election night operations.
Professor Rhea-Luz Valbuena, Executive Director of APC’s School of Computing and Information Technologies (SoCIT), emphasized the value of this partnership in shaping well-rounded professionals. “This initiative showed our students how technology, when used responsibly, can uphold democratic values. It wasn’t just about data—it was about civic responsibility, ethics, and teamwork,” she shared.
The effort highlighted APC’s hallmark project-based learning (PBL) model, which moves beyond theory to immerse students in real-world problem-solving. Third-year Computer Science and IT students formed five agile teams, each with a distinct role. One team built dashboards to visualize election data in real time, another developed machine learning tools for deeper analytics, while others focused on cybersecurity, infrastructure support, and quality assurance testing.
These operations took place in APC’s multipurpose hall, which was transformed into a live analytics command center. From there, students published dashboards and insights that are now available on elections.org.ph and namfrel-analytics-apc.org, giving the public and stakeholders open access to reliable electoral data.
Through this landmark initiative, APC continues to prove that its students are not just learners—they are contributors to nation-building. “Our mission is to prepare students not just for careers, but for a purpose,” said Prof. Valbuena. “This project is a testament to what future-ready education looks like when it meets real-world relevance.”
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