Need OER for a specific topic? Request It.

OER Africa has launched a request facility for health OER.  The purpose of this facility is to provide an online space for Health academics to solicit health related OER learning materials and manage requests on a given topic, as well as responses solicited from the network, for this request. Academics or course developers putting together a course for second year nursing students, for example, might submit a request for case studies, lab exercises, and videos to support a class on midwifery. The requestor creates an account on the site and completes the request form. Once the request is submitted, an OER Africa administrator reviews and approves the request. The request is disseminated publicly on the OER Africa website, with the purpose of inviting comments on the request, and providing opportunity for referrals to links with relevant materials.

OER Africa will also cross-post the request to the OER Commons' OER Librarian Twitter hashtag (#oerlib) to increase publicity about the request. Additionally, OER Africa will search a few OER search engines to try to find relevant OER. These will be filtered back to the requestor. The public can view a list of requests and they may be able to help those who are requesting resources by directing them to relevant sources.

Co-developing Health OER in Ghana, South Africa, and the U.S.

One of the goals of the African Health OER Network is to connect people across institutions and countries for producing, sharing, and distributing OER. Faculty from each institution contribute specialized knowledge based on their experiences and geographic locations. How does one facilitate information exchange among these universities to efficiently produce contextually appropriate educational materials?

Between October and December 2009, researchers Airong Luo (University of Michigan), Dick Ng’ambi (University of Cape Town), and Ted Hanss (University of Michigan) interviewed 52 participants involved in various roles related to health OER from five universities: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Ghana (UG), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of the Western Cape (UWC), and University of Michigan (U-M). The aim of their study was to investigate the sustainability of OER based on possible cross-institutional collaboration as well as to explore social and technical challenges in creating and sharing OER materials. The researchers found that individuals were interested in collaborating to learn more about diseases common to a specific geographical area, to connect with specialists in their field, to develop curricula, and to share best practices for OER production. They also identified challenges to collaboration, such as network connectivity constraints, competition between institutions, and lack of awareness of potential collaborators in their field.

Research on OER at KNUST, UG, in Ghana Medical Journal

Last month, several faculty from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Ghana (UG), and University of Michigan (U-M) published an article in the Ghana Medical Journal with results from an OER pilot study conducted with final year medical students.  In 2009, a KNUST professor distributed two short animations on polymerase chain reaction (an introduction and the real-time method) to 150 students and a UG professor distributed a module on total abdominal hysterectomy to 19 students. Two weeks later, the students were given a one-page questionnaire regarding their usage of the OER. Based on the survey, the faculty at both medical schools determined that computer ownership or availability is sufficient to access electronic-based learning materials and that all students believed the programs to be more effective than other learning methods.