2009.07.29.african health oer network
TRANSCRIPT
Inaugural Workshop, Cape Town, July, 2009
A Vision for a Health OER A Vision for a Health OER
Network in AfricaNetwork in Africa
The RationaleThe Rationale Need to scale up training of health
workforce – good materials are an essential requirement, but often expensive to procure or develop from scratch, leading to significant duplication in materials development or absence of resources
Wealth of good, available content, but often hard to find
Essential to put mechanisms in place to build capacity to replace ageing academic populations
Ensure OER processes in health are driven from Africa, not imported to Africa and see Africans as contributors to OER Networks not passive beneficiaries
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A Vision for the NetworkA Vision for the Network
The African Health OER Network seeks to enable participants to develop, adapt, and share health education resources to augment limited human and other resources in the health sector and impact positively on overall health provision in Africa and beyond
African Health OER Network Inaugural Workshop
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Network FunctionsNetwork Functions
Aggregate the results of multiple initiatives by collecting, classifying, tagging, and then actively sharing Africa-initiated resources with the global health community
Facilitate discussion of how those resources can best be used
Share exemplars of best practice Work through institutions and associations
to advocate the principles of openness and sharing of educational materials
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Guiding PrinciplesGuiding Principles The Network will not be owned by any single
entity, but rather by all participants
Commitment to link and work with other emerging Regional Health OER Networks where they are initiated, as well as seeking to align activities to enable global integration between networks
Network participants will drive processes based on their needs – Health OER Network participations should not generate additional work load, but rather help people to manage work load more effectively
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Guiding PrinciplesGuiding PrinciplesCode of conduct will be established
and continually updated through ongoing consultation to set rules of ‘engagement’ between members
Advisory Board to be established to oversee adherence to Code of Conduct by all participants
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What the Network will NOT What the Network will NOT dodoHold funds for disbursement to
Network participantsCentralized quality controlSeek to control membershipDevelop content itself – only through
participants’ activities
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Audience(s)Audience(s)Participation in network will be open –
no conditions for joiningPrimary target is African health
academics and faculties – first focus on English, but open to growing to accommodate other languages if suitable partners indicate willingness to drive process
Network to include individuals, health faculties, NGOs, project teams, associations, consortia, government departments, etc
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Audience(s) – ctdAudience(s) – ctd
No need to sign anything, but all individuals and institutions will be encouraged to add electronic signature to Statement of Commitment
No policy implications for institutions joining, but it is likely that participation in Network will lead to institutions reviewing key policies (e.g. IPR, rewards/incentives, etc)
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Audience(s) – ctdAudience(s) – ctd
Learners may become a secondary beneficiary, but Network will assume primary responsibility for communication with learners resides with academics and institutions
Thus no attempt to include additional technologies - e.g. print-on-demand, audio/video streaming, mobile technology – to get materials to learners
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Statement of CommitmentStatement of CommitmentParticipants will commit to:
Releasing all content to be shared with Network available under some CC or equivalent licence (but no obligation to use one specific licence or to release all content they have available)
Ensuring content released does not breach other copyrights
A culture of constant improvement of curriculum and learning and teaching resources
Recruiting new participants to join and contribute to the Network
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Sharing ResourcesSharing Resources No attempt to replace existing/ emerging
institutional repositories of content Institutions to be responsible for branding
content properly for attribution purposes Seek to aggregate content housed in those
repositories through a Health OER Network online platform, using common meta-data framework
Push content aggregated into Health OER into key OER repositories globally (e.g. OER Commons, OCW Repository, Merlot, etc)
Use XML feeds to seek to automate version control and RSS feeds to provide notifications of new content
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Quality AssuranceQuality Assurance
The Network will not perform any quality assurance function itself
QA will happen at the margins of the Network:Institutions/individuals encouraged to
ensure they only submit work they consider to be of high quality
Institutions/individuals expected to perform QA work when deciding what content to incorporate into their programmes
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Quality Assurance – ctdQuality Assurance – ctd
Network’s online platform will enable rating of content, view of number of downloads, and addition of comments to facilitate Network participants doing community-driven QA
Institutions/individuals will be encouraged to do reviews of content online to make comments on content accessible to all in Network
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Next StepsNext Steps
Agree priority focus areas – Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Public Health, Occupational Therapy, etc – and generate generic content categories within each to facilitate sharing of content under common framework
Identify existing sources of content, generate required meta data, and aggregate it into relevant frameworks for shared access
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Next Steps – ctdNext Steps – ctd
Set up web space – initially inside OER Africa site, but possibly to become dedicated URL over time – to facilitate sharing of content
Set up discussion list to enable participants to stay in contact
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Our CommitmentOur Commitment
OER Africa and UofM commit to functioning as initial Network custodians
Will host online health OER platform Available to assist where requested with
advocacy processes Will facilitate initial communication to bring
Network to life and grow participation Expect to distribute ownerships of custodian
functions to Network participants wherever possible to grow the contributions of all involved
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