• 27 August 2013: University of Nairobi School of Public Health convened a workshop on “Open Education as a Method To Increase Collaboration, Flexibility, and Global Visibility”
• 5 September: St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College in Ethiopia convened an introductory OER workshop for residents and faculty in the obstetrics and gynaecology department
• 20 November: Kathleen Omollo (University of Michigan) and James Glapa-Grossklag (Community College Consortium for OER) presented a workshop “Leveraging Institutional Open Practices to Promote Access to Education” at the African Virtual University 1st International Conference in Nairobi, Kenya
• 22 November: Griff Richards (African Virtual University), Bridget Nash (Siyavula) and Kathleen Omollo (University of Michigan) presented a panel titled “Cross-Cultural Crowdsourcing: A method for sharing OERs across language barriers” at the African Virtual University 1st International Conference
• 7 December: University of Michigan presented a demo on “Versatile Wireless Networks for Offline Sharing and Tracking of Open Educational Resources using Raspberry Pi and TPLink Routers” at the Information and Communication Technologies and Development conference (ICTD2013), hosted by University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape
• 10 December: University of Michigan presented on “Crowdsourcing subtitles to increase access to educational videos” in an accessibility workshop at the ICTD2013 conference
• Upcoming: 10-15 March is Open Education Week.
• Upcoming: 23-25 April is the Open CourseWare Consortium Global Conference in Slovenia.

Are you interested in being a guest author for our newsletter? Do you have articles, news, events, or learning modules that we should highlight? Let us know at healthoer@oerafrica.org.

The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) is a collaboration of Queen Mary University of London and City University London to provide professional training in healthcare. CETL provides simulated learning environments where health care students learn together in an authentic environment that mirrors the clinical and communication challenges that students meet in practice.

These innovative learning materials, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license, are designed to support clinical and communication skills teaching, self directed learning, and interprofessional teaching, learning and assessment.

Since August 2013, the following new learning materials have been contributed to our collection by authors at our partner institutions:

• Emergency Medicine
  • New lecture slides for residents and nurses, from the Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative (CC BY SA)
• Family Medicine
  • Diabetes 101: Taking Charge, from University of Michigan (CC BY NC SA)
• Medical Education
  • Instructional Methods in Health Professions Education, from University of Michigan Coursera Program (CC BY SA)
  • Designing Case-based e-Learning, from University of Michigan (CC BY)
• Medical Sociology
  • Human Rights Key: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex themed Key, from University of Cape Town (CC BY NC SA)
• Obstetrics and Gynaecology
  • Episiotomy and Repair - Adaptation, from St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College and University of Michigan. (CC BY NC) Adapted from Episiotomy and Repair learning module, from University of Ghana in 2009 (CC BY NC)
  • A case of hydrops fetalis in an Rh-negative mother, from St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College, University of Michigan. (CC BY NC)
  • Contraceptive Implant Procedures, from St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College and University of Michigan. (CC BY)
  • Building Academic Partnerships to Reduce Maternal Morbidity and Mortality: A Call to Action and Way Forward, from University of Michigan (CC BY NC SA)
• Occupational Health
  • Occupation-based Community Development Framework, from University of Cape Town (CC BY NC ND)

You may also be interested in these new resources from other health OER collections:

• Maternal Health Services
  • Newborn care videos, from the Global Health Media project, available in English, French, Swahili, and Spanish. (CC BY NC ND)

Highlights from Open Access Week Events Around the World
Author: Ms Susan Topol, Marketing and Communications Manager, Medical School Information Services, University of Michigan

Open Access Week took place from 21-27 October. Now in its seventh year, Open Access Week is a global event for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share their knowledge with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in making Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. This year's theme was "Open Access: Redefining Impact." Many in person and virtual events took place around the world in conjunction with Open Access Week. Below are a sample of some of the events that took place related to open initiatives in Africa and or in the health section. 
 
With support from the Open Access Programme coordinated by Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), several Open Access Week events took place across Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, and Lesotho.
 
In Kenya, the University of Nairobi (UON) Library hosted its third Open Day to enhance usage of library resources and creating awareness of the UON open access institutional repository. The UON College of Agriculture and Veterinary Science were among the participants in this program that promoted open access to harness the sharing and dissemination of information and knowledge globally.
 
The Consortium of Tanzania Universities and Research Libraries (COTUL) hosted open access events in Mwanza. The events included a public lecture on open access advantages to medical students at Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, as well as an open access workshop at St. Augustine University of Tanzania. Students led the agenda by sharing personal reflections on how open access helps them in their studies.
 
The Lesotho Library Consortium (LELICO) hosted a series of workshops on "Advancing faculty-driven open access policies and practices among the faculties of National University of Lesotho and Lesotho College of Education". Celebrating its 10th year, LELICO combined its anniversary celebrations with International Open Access Week in order to promote awareness of open access to the academic and library community.
 
The open access publisher BioMed Central (BMC) also organized activities around Open Access Week. BMC Medicine hosted a one-hour Twitter chat to discuss how open access publishing impacts medical research and global health. The discussion, which has been archived as a Storify post, included three prominent researchers: Agnes Binagwaho, Charles Wiysonge and Prabhat Jha. Earlier this year, BMC Medicine launched the Medicine for Global Health article collection, which aims to explore public health initiatives, health care policies and economics, and research into the control and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Specifically, factors affecting evidence-based medicine in resource-limited settings were discussed in a Forum article published recently in the journal.

For more about Open Access Week 2013, browse the events archive.

Case Studies in OER Remixing: Examples from the African Health OER Network
Author: Igor Lesko, Operations Manager & Open Education Specialist, Open CourseWare Consortium.

N.B. This is an adaptation of a October 2013 posting from the Open CourseWare Consortium Blog.

OER adaptation and remix is one of the core values of the open education movement. Two recent examples of OER remixes from Ethiopia highlight how teaching resources developed in one country can be easily adapted to work in different contexts.

Adaptation of a learning module on Caesarean section
Dr. Lia Tadesse, a professor from the St. Paul Hospital Millennium Medical College in Ethiopia, was interested in creating a learning module on Caesarean section for her residents in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She was referred to a video-based module on C-Sections created by the University of Ghana and the University of Michigan to teach medical students in Ghana. While watching the video, Dr. Lia realized that the material was well suited to her needs, however, the procedure is done somewhat differently in Ghana than the way the procedure is taught in Ethiopia. In order to address these differences, Dr. Lia chose to change a few key elements:

1. A new video introduction was added to introduce the module to Ethiopian students.
2. To provide more context to learners in Ethiopia, the surgical procedures narration was revised with a new audio recording.
3. Additional questions were added to the self-assessment based on the new audio commentary and to insure understanding of specific procedures followed at St. Paul’s.
   

With these few additions and changes, Dr. Lia was able to provide nearly immediate access to high quality learning materials to meet a high priority learning need. The original co-author from Michigan was able to guide Dr. Lia through the adaptation. The adaptation is also shared as an OER.

Adaptation of a learning module on Episiotomy
In 2009,  the University of Ghana and the University of Michigan created a teaching module on Episiotomy and Repair, which they shared through the African Health OER Network. In 2013, the module was adapted for use by physicians at the St. Paul Millennium Medical Hospital in Ethiopia to train Obstetrics and Gynaecology residents. The adaptation contains the same surgical video and many of the same self-assessment questions as the original version. The adaptation includes audio commentary and additional text by an Ethiopian physician with additional questions for his students in Addis Ababa, noting the similarities and differences in how the procedure is performed in Ghana.

Promoting Health Literacy through Open Educational Resources in Cape Coast, Ghana
Author: Dr. John K. Boateng, Lecturer, Institute of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana

The Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) is one of the key institutions through which the University of Ghana carries its mission, standards, and curricula into cities, towns, villages, and communities across Ghana. The Institute offers short courses for community leaders and courses leading to diploma and degree programs (Bachelors, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. in Adult Education.

The Cape Coast Learning Center is one of ten ICDE regional centers that provides face-to-face instructions for its adult learners. Previous in-person outreach activities have included teaching women potters to construct kilns to enhance the sustainability of the pottery industry in that community and teaching women in fishing industry about modern techniques for fish preservation in order to increase the shelf life of fish, and seminars aimed at improving interpersonal communication and human relations.

In order to address the growing demand of working adults need flexible timing and location in order to further their education, the Cape Coast Learning Center prepares to enroll its first distance education programme in 2014. There is thus the need to explore online learning activities and open educational resources that integrate with the face-to-face teaching currently offered.

IICDE views this expansion of continuing education as opportunity for to expand access to health information among traditionally disadvantaged populations. These include the unemployed, the disabled and ethnic minorities as well as antenatal and postnatal mothers. Strategies currently being considered by the Center include:

1. Build networks with community and faith-based organizations, social service agencies, and other partners such as literacy service providers to deliver health and safety information to different points in the community.
2. Employ technology and electronic health tools such as open educational resources to deliver health information and services at the place, time, and in the multiple forms people need and want.
3. Ensure access to the Internet and devices that deliver health information services among others.
4. Promote health literacy improvement efforts through professional and advocacy organizations.
5. Create documents that inform in simple wording in multiple languages about health literacy.
6. Assess learner knowledge of health information to determine if individuals understand the information and can take appropriate actions.