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African Health OER Network Impact Study

Posted by Igor Lesko on Monday, August 5th, 2013

The African Health OER Network was established in 2009 by OER Africa, an initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education, and the University of Michigan, in partnership with four universities in Africa:

  • Kwarme Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)
  • University of Ghana (UG)
  • University of Cape Town
  • University of the Western Cape (UWC)

The mission of the Network is to advance health education in Africa by using open educational resources (OER) to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and support communities around health education. More information about the Network is available here.

The African Health OER Network Impact Study, released in June 2012, focused on Network activities, partnerships that have been formed since project inception, as well as broader usage of health OER by other users not affiliated with the Network. The Study addressed the following questions:

1, Is there clear evidence that the published OER are being used by students?

2, Is there any evidence that partner institutions are proactively starting to use OER produced outside of the Network in their programmes? Can this use be linked to what we have done?

3, Is there any evidence that the quality of teaching and learning at partner institutions has improved due to the investments in producing and using OER? Can we establish any link to improved learning outcomes at any institutions?

4, What have been the relative financial implications of OER compared to proprietary approaches of publishing and content development, both in terms of delivering education in universities and in terms of producing educational resources?

5, Is there any evidence of any non-partner institutions having found and used the products from the Network?

6, What is the impact of OER on academics’ career development?

7, What is the effective social and technical institutional infrastructure to support OER production and use?

8, What is an effective cross-institutional collaboration model for OER production?

To download the Study, please click here.