1. • Open online learning is a useful method for public health eye
care training and content is relevant across multiple settings
• Closer relationship between content and local health &
education systems will strengthen applicability
• Provision of OER in accessible formats facilitates eye care
educators to adopt material for own educational practice
• Low awareness of OER & copyright is likely to be a barrier to
wider uptake of OER in global eye care education
• Detailed communications strategy is needed to engage with
stakeholders across multiple settings and contexts
Next steps: To build on the findings so far in a new project in
partnership with the University of Cape Town:
• Facilitate four African educational institutions to adapt the course
for their contexts and training curriculi.
• Support development of communities of interest to raise
awareness, and uptake, of OER amongst eye care educators
Conclusions
We created an open, online course:
• Bite size content applicable across multiple eye care settings
• Course material licensed as OER through Creative Commons
• Course piloted on institutional Moodle
• 5 local eye care educators (country facilitators) promoted the
pilot to a variety of eye care workers in urban, rural and remote
settings in Kenya, Botswana and Ghana
• Delivered course twice on FutureLearn MOOC platform (FL)
• Used 80+ channels to promote FL course to international and
local leaders in eye care education
• Public health eye care experts contributed to FL course content
and mentored learners in course discussions
• Data on demographics, participation and experience of course
collected through pre- and post-course surveys and analytics
• To better understand impact on service provision:
• Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out six
months after pilot with completers, partial completers and
country facilitators (n=12)
• FL learners (2nd run) shared plans to use the OER course
materials through an online form (n=21)
Methods
Using open education to strengthen global eye care:
Strategic action and international collaboration
Sally Parsley1, Oscar Debrah2, Michael Gichangi3, Lindsay Hampton4, Astrid Leck1,
Chatawana Molao5, Nyawira Mwangi3, Michael Ntodie6, Joanna Stroud7 and Daksha Patel1
1 International Centre for Eye Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK 2 Eye Care Unit, Ghana Health Service 3 Ministry of Health, Kenya 4 Public Health Specialist, Canada
5 Ophthalmic Nursing Department, Ministry of Health, Botswana 6 University of Cape Coast, Ghana 7 Division of Education, LSHTM
There are 285m visually impaired people globally, 90% live in low-
and middle-income countries (LMICs)1. More trained eye care staff
are urgently needed to deliver appropriate services, especially in
Sub-Saharan Africa2. Despite international curriculum guidelines
public health is often not included in ophthalmic training curriculi in
LMICs, largely due to lack of faculty and training resources.
Open Education Resources (OER) have potential to make education
more accessible, flexible and sustainable when adapted for local
contexts3.
We aim to use OER to scale up the impact of a successful face-to-
face public health eye care course & to build sustainability &
capacity by promoting OER adoption amongst eye care educators.
Introduction
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank everyone who contributed to, helped promote and participated in the course. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Seeing Is Believing, LSHTM and FutureLearn.
Contacts: Sally.Parsley@LSHTM.ac.uk, Daksha.Patel@LSHTM.ac.uk
References [All accessed 23.03.2016]
1. Pascolini D, Mariotti SP. (2012), Global estimates of visual impairment: 2010. Br J Ophthalmol 96(5):614-8. Available at http://bit.ly/1pIgsqb
2. Palmer JJ, et al. (2014), Mapping human resources for eye health in 21 countries of sub-Saharan Africa: current progress towards VISION 2020. Human Resources for Health 12:44 Available at http://bit.ly/1RgIZxb
3. Buckler A, Perryman L-A, Musafir S, Seal T. (2014). The role of OER localisation in building a knowledge partnership for development: Comparing the TESSA and TESS-India teacher education projects. In: OCWC Global 2014: Open Education for a Multicultural World, 23-25 April, 2014, Slovenia. Available at http://bit.ly/1ZsTxuO
• 5,323 registered, 3,062 participated and 1,050 completed ≥50%
• First online course for most (69%) (n=1,473)
• 69% from LMICs, 44% from Sub-Saharan Africa (n=1,495)
• 83% health/social care workers (n=1,233)
• 49% found course through a recommendation (n=1,405)
• 96% satisfied or very satisfied with course experience (n=239)
• 86% preferred to download low-bandwidth OER in pilot (n=53)
Qualitative findings
• Learning from the course is being applied (Fig 1)
• Content would be strengthened by adapting for local context
• OER course materials are being adapted and re-used (Fig 2)
• Low awareness of OER concept. “Do I need a license, I thought
you said we can share it anyhow?”
• Copyright not seen as a critical issue, “People share resources,
there is quite a lot of sharing and I am not highly bothered if it is
acknowledged or not [if] you are not making money out of it”
Results
Improving health worldwide www.lshtm.ac.uk
Fig 2. How participants plan to use the course materials (OER)
Fig 1. How participants are applying learning from the course