Guest Contribution by Dick Heller
Dick Heller recently retired as Professor of Public Health at the University of Manchester, UK, where he developed a fully on-line Masters course in Public Health. Previously Dick was at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he was part of the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN).
Let me tell you about http://www.peoples-uni.org/ which aims to develop educational content around Open Educational Resources, freely available on the Internet, to help with Public Health capacity building in low- to middle-income countries.
Local universities offering public health education may be oversubscribed for face-to-face courses and fees for overseas universities, including e-learning distance programmes, are higher than can be afforded by most potential students in these countries. Internet-based e-learning has the exciting potential to deliver high quality learning resources anytime and anywhere, and although access is by no means universal it is improving quickly.
There is an ever expanding range of high quality on-line education resources freely available through the Internet, and a number of universities are putting educational material on-line for open access, although they do not include either teaching or accreditation of learning. Peoples-uni.org aims to provide educational context around the materials freely available on the Internet. A number of national and international partners have agreed to be part of this, and momentum is building.
We are starting with Public Health, building towards Masters level courses, and are piloting our first course module on Maternal Mortality currently. We have a large interest in accessing this course and the pilot is going very well. Draft course modules on Maternal Mortality and Child Mortality can be seen on http://moodle.cawd.net/course/category.php?id=68.
We are hoping for collaborations to develop to assist with this initiative, and plan to keep costs low enough to allow access by those who will benefit. Any groups or individuals who wish to join the initiative in any capacity will be welcome.
Dick Heller - dick.heller "AT" manchester.ac.uk
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