For raising awareness of the African Health OER Network

I work for the U-M medical school with our health open educational resources (OER) partnerships in Africa. Through our African Health OER Network project, we work with African health science academics to develop teaching materials and share them worldwide under an open license (Creative Commons) so that they can be used, copied, adapted, integrated, and shared worldwide. Our goal is to advance health care education in Africa by using OER to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and support communities around health education. The project began in 2008 with institutions in Ghana and South Africa but we continue to draw in more African participants with the goal of building a continent-wide Network.

Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to expand access to health education, and consequently, strengthen the skills and increase the number of healthcare professionals joining the workforce. This is because OER can:


 * Increase the availability of high quality, relevant and need-targeted learning materials that can be openly shared;
 * Eliminate duplication by using and adapting materials that are already available, saving lecturer time that can be invested elsewhere to improve education outcomes;
 * Reduce the cost of accessing educational materials;
 * Support opportunities for distance and continuing education through provision of multimedia rich learning materials to enrich learning; and
 * Foster collaborative partnerships of healthcare professionals working in communities of practice, across and within institutions, in the creation, sharing, and use of teaching and learning resources.

I think there are several areas of our project which may be of interest to you:

1. Health professionals and academic can use the site to find health educational materials to use, redistribute, and adapt. There is a wealth of resources available on the Health Resources and Health OER Repositories pages on the African Health OER Network webspace (http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer/ is primary, http://open.umich.edu/education/med/oernetwork/ is secondary and easier for downloading files from the US).

2. We recently launched an OER Request Facility, which is like a library reference service for health-related OER): http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer/RequestOER/tabid/1865/Default.aspx

3. Academics can use the Network as a publishing outlet for their own materials. Participation is open to all health sciences academics and professionals. All they need to do is select a Creative Commons license (http://open.umich.edu/share/license) for their work and send it to healthoer@oerafrica.org.

4. We offer consulting and workshops (on-site as well as virtual seminars) related to policies, production, and distribution of OER. I have attached a brochure which outlines some of services. (brochure available at https://open.umich.edu/wiki/images/f/fc/HealthOERNetworkBrochure-March2011-AccordionFold-8.5x11.pdf)

We have a declaration for the Network which we ask our supporters to sign: http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer/HealthOERHome/SignDeclaration/tabid/1330/Default.aspx. I encourage you to add your name.

I would be glad to further discuss our project with you and perhaps brainstorm potential opportunities of collaboration. My contact information is below.