Health OER Network Design Jam March 2010

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Post-Event Update
We had a great session with 18 participants. The intro slides have been posted to SlideShare. The notes generated from the event are below under outcomes. We've also added a number of photos to Flickr.

Intro to the Jam
We have an exciting opportunity at the University of Michigan to have a lasting long-term impact on global health through the creation and dissemination of health open educational resources (OER). The Medical School, the School of Dentistry, the School of Information and other schools and colleges have been involved in this collaborative effort. The Hewlett Foundation has helped us bring this opportunity to the continent of Africa - supporting the effort to promote access to high quality, openly licensed learning materials and to build meaningful partnerships among health care professionals and students. The challenges in this space are huge; and our group alone can't do it. As such, we want to bring together people who can help us think about infrastructures that we can use to inspire real change and foster the exchange of valuable ideas and resources.

On March 25 at 6 pm, the Open.Michigan Initiative is sponsoring a design jam to discuss the following idea: How can we build a shared social network platform that addresses global health education needs and increases the sharing of health education resources across the African continent?

This design jam will bring together students from the School of Information, School of Public Policy, and the Medical School. This event is an opportunity to apply some course concepts to a real world problem with a small time commitment. There may also be opportunities for continued involvement in the project.


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Logistics
The design jam will be held in Ehrlicher room (411) in West Hall. Food and soft drinks will be served. Please RSVP to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PWL5S8V. If you are interested in the project, but unable to attend this event, please respond to the survey.

There will be flip charts, markers, and white boards for teams.

Agenda

 * 6 pm (starting promptly at 6 pm, NOT Michigan time)
 * 6:00 - 6:15 pm Health OER Network overview (TH, KL). Intro slides available on SlideShare
 * 6:15 - 6:20 pm Overview of design jam structure
 * 6:20 - 6:40 pm brainstorm ideas in small groups (3 - 4 people) and prepare basic model/prototype
 * 6:40 - 7:05 pm Share Ideas, Get Feedback; Eat
 * 7:05 - 7:35 pm In Small Groups, refine mockup/model
 * 7:35 - 7:50 pm Share Models, Get Feedback
 * 7:50 - 8 pm Closing (TH, KL)

Background on the Health OER Network
The inadequate density and distribution of healthcare providers negatively affects health outcomes around the globe. In Africa in particular, too few health care professionals are being trained to meet local needs. A key barrier in health education is the lack of instructor capacity to teach both basic and clinical sciences, complicated by the duplication of effort in developing teaching materials.

In November 2008, the Hewlett Foundation began a project to develop health Open Educational Resources (OER) - learning materials that are available freely available for use, remixing and redistribution. OER has the potential to equalize access to health information and knowledge and impact healthcare teaching and learning.The Health OER project is a collaborative effort between the University of Michigan, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Town (South Africa), the University of the Western Cape (South Africa), and OER Africa (South Africa/Kenya). During the first year of the project, each institution participated in OER advocacy and production workshops, developed and deployed OER, and established their own institutional OER programs. Two institutions also revised their institutional policies to support OER development.

In 2010-2011, the six partners are now trying to draw in more African and, eventually, global participants to create, adapt, share, and use OER to benefit of health education in Africa.

For more information about the Health OER Network, visit the Health OER Collaborations page.

The Design Problem
How can we build a shared social network platform that addresses global health education needs and increases the sharing of health education resources?

Design Constraints
The Health OER Network poses both social and technical challenges. This network will be a community of health OER creators and users, as well as a central location for finding health OER.

Bandwidth varies greatly between countries. Any platform must be accessible (e.g. navigation, file size) from members within Africa as well as observers outside the continent.

There is great geographical distance between the members of this network. Since travel is time-consuming and costly, it is difficult for members to gather for in-person meetings.

Copyright law differs greatly by country.

N.B. During the first two years, all resources will be in English, so translation will not be an issue

Structure
Students will be divided into teams of 3 or more. Each team will explore the design problem along one or more of the following five dimensions:


 * Organizational design and knowledge management


 * How do we incentivize people to contribute OER?
 * How do we capture and share knowledge of the content development process?


 * Content development


 * How can U-M health science students traveling abroad capture and share their experiences as OER?
 * How do content experts identify themselves and each other in order to collaborate?
 * What skills and tools are necessary to allow creators to develop content -- and how can the network help develop and share those skills and tools?


 * Technical platform


 * How can we provide resources that are easily discoverable?
 * How can we use technology to facilitate communication among members of the network?
 * There are most likely no one-size-fits-all solutions, so how do the various technologies interact with one another to create a robust, flexible, and scalable platform?


 * Advocacy


 * How do we convince creators that open content is important and provide them with tools to advocate for open content at institutions?
 * How do we leverage existing social networks (physical &amp; virtual) to stimulate demand for open content?


 * Copyright and Institutional Policy


 * How can members determine who owns copyright at their institutions - e.g. the faculty or the institutions?
 * Do people understand Creative Commons, public domain, and localized copyright law?
 * What risks fall on institution by creating general policies around copyright and OER, specifically?

Outcomes
Here are the notes generated from the Design Jam on March 25. We've also added a number of photos to Flickr.

Advocacy / Copyright and Institutional Policy
Participants: Kyla Wall-Polin, Kristen Kogachi, Ryan Lankton, Susan Topol, Kathleen Ludewig


 * How do we convince creators that open content is important?


 * financial incentives: work with public and private grant-providing institutions
 * academic incentives: work with universities
 * personal incentives: awards/recognition for participants.


 * How do we raise awareness of OER?


 * Look at what motivates the actors, appeal to those motivations.
 * - alumni organizations
 * - new hire meetings at universities
 * - student groups
 * - possibility of student employee rep. to speak at events listed above


 * Copyright and Institutional Policy


 * Determined by law and policy
 * National copyright law
 * University policy (institution or faculty?)
 * Source of content and images
 * Different countries interpret copyright differently (different laws)


 * Advocacy


 * Build awareness of open content (e.g., Wikimedia) and how to use it
 * Tenure incentives for faculty
 * OER as requirement for grants
 * Context is important (African OER) and becomes more sustainable


 * Biggest takeaways: academic incentive through awards (e.g. best learning resource for X), students as drivers of the network

Organizational Structure and Knowledge Management
Participants: Carrie Ashendel, Michael Perry, Travis August, Purdom Lindblad, Airong Luo, David Malicke, Pieter Kleymeer


 * Incentivize Contribution


 * Social site ranking
 * Identify community practices
 * Grants
 * Reputation
 * Tenure calculation
 * Course credit
 * Demonstrate value
 * Identify knowledge gaps
 * RSS feed / reminder


 * Capture / Share


 * Virtual conferences
 * dialogue between user/site
 * KORA (matrix.msu) - content management
 * standardization


 * Peer Review / Legitimate


 * Biggest takeaways: standardized metadata; dynamic site content to encourage people to keep coming back

Technical Platform
Participants: Gabriel Krieshok, Ben Sigrin, Alex Pompe, Greg Grossmeier, Ted Hanss, Cary Engleberg


 * Audience: Med Students in Ghana who are Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom


 * Because constraints in social, cultural, methodological concerns exist -- technical problems are different
 * Low cost to entry
 * Technology addresses this by being diverse in resources (CDs, DVDs, thumbdrives, Internet, local network, wireless, offline, physical, downloadable).
 * For Downloads, check local server first. Provide multiple versions of resources: video, slides &amp; audio, slides, text only.
 * Profile system that has an inventory. Before you download you can check who else has that resource and can then defer to low-tech.


 * Biggest takeaways: explore LAN access through caching and tracking local users who downloaded materials