Richard F. Heller and six co-authors, Capacity-building for public health, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, December 2007. Excerpt:
...The free and open-source software (FOSS) movement provides inspiration for an affordable and credible solution [to the problem of inadequate medical training in low and middle income countries]....
In the education field, there are now parallel developments of Open Educational Resources (OERs) with an ever-expanding range of high-quality online resources that are freely available through the Internet. There is major international interest and commitment in the use of OERs, as demonstrated by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning’s Open Educational Resources Community....
Web 2.0 refers to the evolution of Internet use from the one-way transfer of information (Web 1.0) to collaboration and participation among users. In the context of education, students are not just recipients of education but are involved in collaboration in learning activities, expressed as eLearning 2.0 or Education 2.0. Education 3.0 is considered to be the extension to this, where open-access materials are created and adapted by various collaborating groups and individuals including the students....
Building on these needs and inspirations, we have proposed an educational initiative based on the open education resources available on the Internet. If we can develop an educational context around the open resources that are freely available, this might provide a low-cost solution to capacity-building in developing countries. This added context would include: a gateway or repository for accessing materials that are linked to identified competence development and can be modified to reflect local settings; the teaching or facilitation of learning through online-focused discussions; a system for accrediting learned competences. We have termed this the People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni)....
PS: Thanks to Gavin Yamey for the alert and for background on how PLoS is supporting the POAE.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/22/2007 10:48:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
