An affordable web-based public health education programme: Peoples-Uni model

ABSTRACT

Background
The global public health workforce shortage is considered a significant issue by international health organisations. Peoples-uni, as a new initiative, offers problem and competence based educational context around Open Educational Resources (OER) on the Internet to assist in Public Health capacity building for low- to middle-income countries (LMIC) using Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) programmes and ‘volunteersourcing’.

Method
The programme has been developed through partnerships and collaboration of volunteer organisations and individuals across the global and digital divides. Course module development and delivery teams were formed for each module to develop competences, that a Public Health practitioner would require to meet at Masters level, and the assessment criteria, to formulate the discussion questions and to identify the educational web sources to help the learner meet the competences. Formative and summative assignments have also been designed.  

Result
The pilot ‘Maternal Mortality’ module was run in October 2007 with students from 8 countries; enrollment had to be capped at 38 for a manageable class and accounting for possible dropouts. Based on the evaluation by Peoples-uni team and the feedback from pilot students six modules are now fully developed by more than 80 people as volunteers from 24 different countries. Enrolment started in September 2008 and the programme attracted substantial interest: 93 people were registered to do 139 modules in just a few weeks despite little publicity. Students are charged $50 dollars for each module.
The modules currently on offer are in Foundation Sciences of Public Health, such as ‘Introduction to Epidemiology Research Methods’ and in Public Health Problems such as ‘Maternal Mortality’. Each module is to be delivered over a four-month period.

Conclusion
The Peoples-uni model of web-based teaching through volunteer work can be the affordable and credible way forward to strengthen the global Public Health capacity.