Delivering OpenCourseWare in Public Health

Sukon Kanchanaraksa, PhD

DirectorCenter for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Objective

• Give answer to these questions

– What is OCW?

– (Seriously) Why does JHSPH participate?

– What are some barriers?

– How do we do it (process)?

– Are we reaching the goals?

– What are the results and feedback?

OCW and OER

• OpenCourseWare (OCW)

– is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses.

– is a snapshot of (recently offered) courses.

– does not provide credit/certification or access to instructors.

• ocw.jhsph.edu• Open Educational Resources (OER)

– are teaching, learning and research resources (digitized materials) that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license.

• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Why Does JHSPH Participate?

•Align with the mission of JHSPH Protecting Health, Saving Lives - Millions at a Time

– Contribute knowledge (content) to educators,

students, self-learners

•Foster ‘culture of contribution’ in education•Provide visibility for faculty (similar to publishing

and could be counted towards promotional process)

•Attract prospective students (?) and provide resources for current students and alumni

Barriers

• Faculty concern– Why give away content?– How much additional work?– What do I get out of it?

• Institutional concern– Impact on enrollment/revenues– Intellectual property issues - copyright– Resources/cost

• Technical needs– Content availability– Publishing process

Barriers

• Global– Quality control– Commercialization– Interoperability

OCW Consortium

• is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.

•Mission: advance education and empower people worldwide through OpenCourseWare.

•Other information at http://www.ocwconsortium.org

•Tufts OCW - health sciences (medicine, veterinary medicine, dental medicine, nutrition sciences, A&S)

OCW Publishing Process

• Acquire content (text, slides, other media, additional course materials)

• ‘Scrub’ content (slides) to identify and handle (replace/remove) copyright objects

• Use OCW template or OCW Publishing software (USU)

• Get faculty approval and publish

Metadata

•OCWC

– OCW RSS

– DCMI

•OER Commons Website

– http://www.oercommons.org/

JHSPH OCW Visit StatisticsTop 10 Countries March 2007 Visits

Country Visits

USA 21,862

China 3,673

Taiwan 1,749

UK 1,460

Canada 1,047

India 575

Australia 570

HongKong 536

Singapore 476

Korea 353

Visitors

JHSPH* Tufts** MIT***

Student 25% 20% 31%

Faculty 15% 18% 13%

Self-learner 50% 55% 52%

Others 10% 7% 4%

* JHSPH 2006 survey data N=474** Tufts 6 month survey June-Dec 2005 N=3600*** MIT 2004 survey data

Anecdotes

• I am teaching a course called Disease and Health in Latin America as a junior level history course. The readings and lectures on line were very helpful in helping me to conceptualize the course, its goals, and the kinds of sources that might work. - Faculty, Ithaca College

• I found some of the statistics presented very interesting and will add some to my courses. I found the Food Policy issue very interesting and wanted to see the outline of the presentation. - Faculty, Pennsylvania State University

• As President of Operations of a healthcare company, we have a number of hospices as well as long-term acute care hospitals. Knowing more about healthcare ethics will allow me more influence and credibility in lectures to other healthcare professionals. - Healthcare Professional

Anecdotes

• I will use what I learned from JHSPH OCW to develop courses for students in a Master of Health Care Education Program. - Faculty, Western Governors University

• I am an environmental activist because of what I know about the health effects of pollution. It is true that our homes are a major source, but where I live in Texas we have very severe air pollution problems. I am currently lobbying our state legislators to change the laws on pollution in Texas. - Physician

• Working for WHO as a social development and public policy specialist, it has been so useful to gain basic knowledge of public health through the OCW. I first heard about OCW from a professor at MIT and found your site from a Google search. Knowing that you view knowledge as a "public good," is so refreshing - particularly given your high profile and excellence in the field of public health. Bravo to JHSPH!! - World Health Organization Staff, East Asia

Thank you

Presented at

MedBiquitous Annual Conference 2007

Sheraton Baltimore City CenterBaltimore, Maryland

April 17, 2007

Contact: skanchan@jhsph.edu