African Health OER Network: 2009 Health OER Design Phase

The University of Michigan, OER Africa, and four African university partners will develop a long term logic model and scalable, sustainable, collaborative content development programs for comprehensive, open, health professions curricula

In 2008, Michigan used a Hewlett Foundation planning grant to hold a successful workshop and follow-up campus meetings. We now propose a one year effort to develop a sustainable and scalable OER program to support health education, particularly in developing countries. This effort will be a collaboration among the University of Michigan, OER Africa, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Town, and the University of the Western Cape.

In this design phase we will:

1. Engage university leadership in implementing institutional policy frameworks that facilitate the success of OER.
2. Hold faculty development workshops to build institutional capacity in OER.
3. Enhance an innovative, low-cost, and scalable process (dScribe) for converting educational materials into OER.
4. Collaboratively develop educational materials as OER and deploy them in our respective curricula.
5. Promote the collaboration and its outputs through a community of practice web site.
6. Establish a framework for a longitudinal study of faculty productivity and the effect of OER on learning outcomes and provide feedback on socio-technical aspects of collaborative OER practices.
7. Produce an evidence-based long-term logic model for Health OER based on a vision that multiple stakeholders will own, in which funders will invest, and which institutions are committed to sustaining. This consensus-driven model will be the basis of a Global Health OER follow-on proposal.