The African Health OER Network:Motivations, Challenges, and Approach

Greg DoyleUniversity of Cape Town, Faculty of Health Sciences

Kathleen Ludewig OmolloUniversity of Michigan, Medical School Office of Enabling Tech.

March 28, 2012 – UNESCO Latin America OER ForumSlides at http://tinyurl.com/healthoernetwork-oerforum

Except where otherwise noted, this work is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

Copyright 2012 The Regents of the University of Michigan and the University of Cape Town.Image of Kakum Park: CC:BY-NC-SA Civitas Veritas

(www.flickr.com/photos/jeffmaurone/211934120/)

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View from the bridge: the surrounding

landscape

Kakum National Park (Ghana)Image CC:BY-NC-SA Kalyan Neelamraju (Flickr)

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Motivations:Challenges to Health Education in Africa

•low budget, small workforce, high disease burden•scarce, aging, and emigrating teaching staff•not enough instructors or classroom spaces•repetitive instructional responsibilities •and….

Image CC:BY Phil Roeder (Flickr)

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large lectures & crowded clinical situations

Image CC:BY-NC University of Ghana

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When you look in textbooks it’s difficult to find African cases. The cases may be pretty similar but sometimes it can be confusing when you see something that you see on white skin so nicely and very easy to pick up, but on the dark skin it has a different manifestation that may be difficult to see.

-Richard Phillips, lecturer, Department of Internal Medicine, KNUST (Ghana) Image CC:BY-NC-SA Kwame Nkrumah

University of Science and Technology

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The mission of the African Health Open Educational Resources (OER) Network (est. 2008) is to advance health education in Africa by creating and promoting free, openly licensed teaching materials created by Africans to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and support health education communities. www.oerafrica.org/healthoer

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Gather Existing MaterialsAssist health professionals in finding materials that

are free, electronic, and openly licensed (i.e. expressly allow the general public to use, adapt,

copy, and redistribute)

Facilitate Discussion

Foster dialogue between health

professionals around pedagogy, policy,

peer review, and openness via onsite consultation,

discussion lists, conference calls, and newsletters

APPROACH

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Case Study:University of Cape Town (South Africa)

Image CC:BY Olibac (Flickr)

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Raise OER awareness and

interest(seminars & w/s)

Source content(volunteers)

Clear copyright (dScribe)

Package OER

Review OER (internal)

Publish OER(repository)Publicize OER

UCT OER Production

Process

OpenContent becomes a Journal Article

• Materials published as OER on OpenContent selected for publishing in the Journal of Occupational Therapy of Galicia, an open access journal for occupational therapists in the Spanish speaking worldhttp://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/oer-uct/2010/12/06/sharing-knowledge-leads-to-opportunities

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How do people find us?

7,264 770

304

3,105 201

182

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University of Cape Town (S. Africa)Challenges•Unaware of OER•Sustainability•Culture of not sharing•Teaching 2nd to research•Labour intensive•Inadequate & part time staff•Not including students

Approach •Awareness & advantages

•Encourage lecturers•Revise Policy•Self-help, manuals, 1-many•Full time technology expert

•Proposals

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Advantages for UCT faculty

• Improvement in quality of resources • Increased visibility for the authors and their institutions• Fosters collaboration among faculty members and staff• Provides opportunity to solve teaching and learning

challenges• Raises awareness of OER developed elsewhere• International recognition by the international OER

community• Development of additional OER by early adopters

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GhanaChallengeElectronic learning activities are not widespread; health instructors do not have time to learn multimedia skills.

Approach •KNUST: Multidisciplinary collaborations with the College of Art•University of Ghana (UG): Hire external multimedia specialists

Image CC:BY-NC-SA Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)

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Ghana

ChallengeWould like to focus materials development on clinical exams and surgical procedures

ApproachUpdate informed consent procedures to allow for public use

Image CC:BY Alan Cleaver (Flickr)

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Ghana

ChallengeFaculty promotion and tenure policies favor research over teaching, journal publications over learning modules.

Approach •Revise institutional policies to include OER among performance criteria and as a qualifying activity for reserved/protected time for lecturers

Video excerpt from KNUST: http://youtu.be/aIZAJsHtl5ICollection of 19 OER video interviews in Ghana: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF4EC45F2B54D6112

Image CC:BY-NC-SA Stephanie Pakrul (Flickr)

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Community•160 people trained in open licenses•115 authors•12 institutions

Collection•135 modules•339 materials•144 videos (906 minutes)

Image CC:BY-NC-SA HeyThereSpaceman (flickr)

Usage•8500 views/mo on website•Accessed in 190+ countries•861K views on YouTube•795 favorites on YouTube•173 comments on YouTube

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Visualization of greatest word frequency in Youtube comments – from wordle.com. http://wiki.datawithoutborders.cc/index.php?title=Project:Current_events:A2_DD

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Image CC:BY-SA lumaxart (Flickr)

Opportunities to Collaboratehttp://openmi.ch/healthoernetwork-connect

3 communities: audio conference + email list •Partners Forum (senior leadership)•Tech (multimedia and tech support staff)•dScribe (students, ©)

Newsletter

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Thanks to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their financial support, as well the founding members of the Network:University of Cape Town, University of the Western Cape, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Ghana, the South African Institute for Distance Education, and University of Michigan.

Image CC:BY Karrie Nodalo (flickr)

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Questions?

Kathleen Omollo: kludewig@umich.edu

Greg Doyle: Gregory.Doyle@uct.ac.za

Image CC:BY-NC-SA Oberazzi (Flickr)

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