SM’s Asia Pacific College Empowers Students with Skills for the Future

Election data visualizations created by the APC student volunteers were made accessible at the NAMFREL official website.

​Asia-Pacific College, a part of the SM group, recently collaborated with NAMFREL as the analytics partner for the 2025 mid-term elections, providing their students with authentic, high-impact learning experiences aligned with national service.

​The elections saw some 1.2 million first-time voters and about 1.8 million Gen Z voters. Beyond casting the vote, it also provided opportunities for young volunteers to directly engage in meaningful participation in a critically important national exercise.

Thirty-one students enrolled in APC’s Analytics and AI class and from the Junior Philippine Computer Society took on critical roles in analyzing real-time election data during the vote transmission period. They were mentored by the NAMFREL systems group and APC faculty members both from the academe and industry.

Rhea-Luz Valbuena, Executive Director of the APC’s School of Computing and Information Technologies (SoCIT), who led the student team lauded their contribution in helping ensure transparency in the elections.

“Through this partnership with NAMFREL, our students experienced first-hand the role of IT in helping safeguard the democratic process, and with the guidance of NAMFREL, ensured that it was fair, accessible, and accountable, gaining exposure not just to technical operations but also ethical decision making, teamwork and civic responsibility,” said Prof. Valbuena.

This collaboration reflects APC’s unique project-based learning (PBL) model, which blends academic rigor with experiential learning. At APC, students aren’t confined to simulated case studies—they are immersed in real-world environments, mentored by real professionals, and tasked with solving actual problems that matter. In this project, third-year Computer Science and Information Technology students from the APC analytics class were organized into five agile teams, each with distinct roles:

The dashboard team designed and managed real-time data visualization for election observers and stakeholders; the machine learning team explored more analytics for election data; the infrastructure website team ensured system reliability and deployment of analytics tools during operations; the quality assurance team conducted rigorous testing to ensure data accuracy and tool stability; the cybersecurity team monitored systems for potential threats and implemented safeguards during election return transmissions.

The operation was housed in APC’s multi-purpose hall, which was converted into the live analytics hub.

The dashboards and insights produced by students can be accessed via elections.org.ph and namfrel-analytics-apc.org—providing the public and election observers with meaningful, timely, and transparent access to electoral data.

“APC students learn not just theories, they apply their technical skills in analytics, cybersecurity, AI, infrastructure in a real-world high-stakes environment. APC affirms and reaffirms its commitment to project-based learning in preparing students for meaningful careers that not only impact the industry but also our country,” said Prof. Valbuena.