Peoples Open Access Education Initiative: Peoples-uni.org
Published Fri, 19/10/2007 - 10:34 Tags:- Add new comment
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Click here to view a progress report.
Most developing countries currently have to cope with a wide range of health problems that interfere with their future economic development. Public health is a major priority, especially continuing high levels of maternal and child mortality, the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and common infectious diseases, as well as the emergence of chronic disease epidemics.
A trained workforce of health professionals is essential, both for the populations themselves and to help deal with global threats to public health. 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 a worldwide movement towards open source software, as well as for collaborative materials development in the spirit of ‘Web 2.0’. 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. The web site is http://www.peoples-uni.org and draft course modules can be seen at http://moodle.cawd.net/course/view.php?id=2. A number of national and international partners have agreed to be part of this, and momentum is building. A pilot of the first course module has begun, and a high demand and considerable interest has become evident with enrolments from 7 developing countries. In order to keep costs low and to ensure sustainability, volunteerism is a key to the development and success of the initiative. Anyone interested to know more about, or contribute to or partner with the Peoples-uni.org is invited to contact Dick Heller, either through the web site or directly at dick.heller@manchester.ac.uk.