Comparisons and advocacy

(If I had a blog, this would go in my blog. But I don't so you get this slightly OT post. Pardon the spam.)

Earlier this yer I got involved in a great project for a division of World Health Organisation called POLHN (Pacific Open Learning Health Net). They operate from Suva, teaming up with Fiji School of Medicine and other local institutions. It was great people there are incredibly warm and hardworking.

The project has some interesting ideas... they are putting together tertiary-level online courses on health issues and running them as for students they sponsor in the Pacific islands; usually doctors and nurses in the field, and FSM students.

And here's the twist part they also run courses with the same content as self-serve courses. This is inspired by a similar project by USAID (I don't have the URL, but USAID has put together some great self-serve courses on health). These self-serve courses are open to the public -- anyone can self-register and enrol, and you can even visit them as guest to see what's there. (Hopefully Google will, too)

Their Moodle site has been "live" for a couple of weeks at http://courses.polhn.org/ and they are now starting with the courses.

They are fighting a lot of battles in the effort to reach health staff who work in the outer islands -- equipment, power, connectivity, everything is a challenge. Hats off to Steve Baxendale, Amanda Quai Hoi and the FSM team. And thanks for a great experience.

Edit: Cross link to docs I wrote for the project http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=66854