Distance Education
Peoples-uni: Developing Public Health Competencies - Lessons from a Pilot Course Module
The People’s Open Access Educational Initiative (Peoples-uni) aims to contribute towards public health capacity building in Developing Countries, through the provision of on-line education for public health practitioners. This document reports on a pilot module on the subject of maternal mortality was delivered at the end of 2007. [adapted from abstract]
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Capacity-Building for Public Health: http://peoples-uni.org
The development of educational context around free and open-source materials available on the Internet has the ability to help build public health capacity in low- to middle-income countries. In a partnership across the global and digital divides, the People’s Open Access Education Initiative has been established to identigy open-access materials linked to the competences required to tackle public health problems, teach through online facilitation by volunteers in conjunction with members of local universities, and accredit learned competences. [adpated from abstract]
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AWARENESS Project Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Distance Learning Course for Training in the Standard Days Method
This report summarizes key results of the evaluation of a distance learning course in the Standard Days Method. This course responds to a growing demand for low-cost options to training for family planning service providers. This option was considered as a potentially useful alternative to traditional class-room training, which can be both costly and time-consuming. [adapted from abstract]
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Online Educational Tools to Improve the Knowledge of Primary Care Professionals in Infectious Diseases
Infectious diseases kill more than 10 million people worldwide every year. It is therefore vital that doctors receive a good education in this field. Online learning is one way in which doctors can learn new knowledge and skills. We conducted this study to determine whether the infectious diseases interactive online learning packages enabled primary care professionals to increase their knowledge and skills in the area of infectious diseases. [from abstract]
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Enhancing Communication Skills for Pediatric Visits Through Online Training Using Video Demonstrations
Training in communication skills for health professionals is important, but there are substantial barriers to individual in-person training for practicing clinicians. This study evaluated the feasibility and desirability of online training and sought suggestions for future courses. [adapted from abstract]
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Comparison of a Web-Based Package with Tutor-Based Methods of Teaching Respiratory Medicine: Subjective and Objective Evaluations
The aim of this study was to establish whether a web-based package on the diagnosis of respiratory disease would be as effective and as acceptable to final year medical students as tutor-led methods of teaching the same material. [from abstract]
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Seeing, Thinking and Acting against Malaria: a New Approach to Health Worker Training in Rura Gambia
This article evaluates a malaria in-service training for community health nurses working at a village level. The program included a computer-based training package, the first of its kind for health professionals in Gambia. [adapted from abstract]
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Collaboration Between Open Universities in the Commonwealth: Successful Production of the First Ever Sri Lankan Nursing Graduates at the Open University of Sri Lanka by Distance Education
This paper discusses a collaborative effort between two universities in Sri Lanka and Canada to create a distance education program to train nurses in Sri Lanka.
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Distance Education in Health and Environmental Health: an Option - Now Let's Strengthen Its Viability
The experience of the Training in Health and Environmental Health in the Caribbean Community project has demonstrated that distance education techniques is an effective medium through which participants in more than eleven countries can be brought together to be educated on topics that are significant to both the region and to individual countries. This paper examines the means through which individuals are educated and meaningful communication among them facilitated.
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Barriers to Training Family Physicians in the Caribbean: Distance Education as a Promising Prescription
The peculiarities of the scattered small states of the Caribbean region call for a model of training practitioners that is effective, relevant and sustainable. Distance education (DE) as an approach offers advantages that meet some of the challenges inherent in training family physicians for the region. This paper examines some of these challenges and shows where DE is being used to structure delivery of the programme. In particular, the need for context-specific training, managing time strictures and the cost issues of training are discussed. [from abstract]
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Uganda: Distance Education Programmes of the Ministry of Health
The Ministry of Health Manpower Development Centre in Uganda has been carrying out training of health workers as part of their continuing education using both distance education and conventional methods since 1989. It was important, therefore, to develop a comprehensive documentation of the distance learning programmes in order to show the effectiveness and potential of distance education in upgrading medical personnel as compared to other approaches. [from author]
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Model of ODL to Address Educational Needs of Health Workers in Africa
Health workers attending overseas universities may be less likely to return home. One response is to improve course provision and professional updating opportunities in-country. Leeds Metropolitan University, with funding from the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission under their distance learning initiative, runs a tailor-made MSc Public Health (Environmental Health and Health Promotion) in Zambia, for nurse tutors, clinical officers and environmental health workers. Using locally relevant curricula, with community-based, student centred, problem-solving approaches, retention may be improved. This paper will discuss how the course is delivered in Zambia, how the partnership developed such as to enable effective delivery of the course, and how sustainable learning can be achieved in a developing country in partnership with a UK University. [from abstract]
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Electronic Learning: an RCN Guide for Nurse Educators
Electronic learning: a guide for nurse educators has been written by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Education Forum in response to growing interest in new learning technologies, both from individual nursing educators and as a result of education policy initiatives. The guidance sets out what we mean by e-learning, the skills that you as nursing educators, and your learners, will need for electronic learning, and the range of learning technology opportunities. [from introduction]
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Promise and Advantage of Distance-Learning for Nurses and Midwives
This presentation was part of the ECSACON Conference. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of traditional teaching versus distance education for nurses and midwives.
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Training Community Health Workers: Using Technology and Distance Education
This paper provides a brief overview of some programs and issues related to the use of technology and distance education to train community health workers in frontier areas. Issues include the use of consistent definitions, the appropriate technology format for the learner and access to that technology, cultural competency /proficiency of faculty, support for faculty and students, and the assurance of quality. [from executive summary]
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Guidelines for Assessing Distance Learning Programmes
These guidelines…propose a set of questions that a prospective learner or purchaser of distance education can use for selecting suitable distance learning programmes. [adapted from introduction]
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Making it Happen: Using Distance Learning to Improve Reproductive Health Provider Performance
This publication is for training managers, trainers of health providers, decision-makers, and those who fund and support training actvities. It examines distance learning as an effective training approach for reproductive health providers in developing countries. In addition to describing the components of distance learning, this publication will provide illustrative examples for training health workers, outline steps for starting a distance learning program and suggest additional resources. It will help readers plan and implement effective distance learning. [author’s description]
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Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Establishing a Distance-Education Programme for Health Personnel in Swaziland
There is a growing conviction among policy-makers that the availability of adequate numbers of well-trained and motivated human resources is a key determinant of health system’s capacity to achieve their health, responsiveness and fairness-improving goals. The objective of this study was to estimate the cost, effectiveness and incremental cost effectiveness ratios of various distance-education strategies for the health sector in Swaziland; and recommend the most cost-effective option. [abstract]
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