#MOOC free report, event MOOC for refugees (w travel fund options) and #CfP eMOOC2019

Two interesting MOOC events coming up one focused on MOOCs for refugees, and one for all you out there involved in researching or experiencing MOOCs (the eMOOC2019 conference). 

Free MOOC report

Linked to the MOONLITE event, there is a free MOOC report (130 pages) on : “Exploiting MOOCs for Access and Progression into Higher Education Institutions and Employment Market”

The report gives an overview of the goals of the project, the methodology, and finishes with the practical recommendations for using online courses to enhance access and progression into higher education and the employment market (for refugees). 

MOONLITE multiplier event (part of a EU Erasmus+ project)

The MOONLITE event supports learning without borders, practically it harnesses the potential of MOOCs for refugees and migrants to build their language competences and entrepreneurial skills for employent, higher education, and social inclusion. 

There are bursaries to help cover your travel expenses which you can apply for at the venue!

23-24 November, UNED (Madrid, Spain).

Friday November 23

15:20. Welcome (Timothy Read & Elena Barcena, UNED, Spain)

15:30-16:30. Presentation of the MOONLITE project and its outputs (Jorge Arús-Hita, UCM, Spain & Beatriz Sedano, UNED, Spain)

16:30-17:30. Open Education Passports and Micro Credentials for refugees and migrants (Ildiko Mazar, Knowledge Innovation Centre, Malta)

17:30-18:00 Coffee

18:00-19:00 Kiron Educational Model and Quality Assurance for MOOC-based curricula (María Bloecher, Kiron, Germany)

Saturday November 24

10:00-11:00:  Inclusive by design: how MOOCs have the potential to reach people in ways other online courses do not (Kate Borthwick, University of Southampton, UK)

11:00-12:00: A tool for institutions for quantifying the costs & benefits of Open Education (Anthony Camilleri, Knowledge Innovation Centre, Malta)

12:00-12:30 Coffee

12:30-13:30: Workshop on how to design a socially inclusive MOOC (Elena Martín- Monje & Timothy Read, UNED, Spain)

13:30. Farewell (Timothy Read & Elena Barcena, UNED, Spain)

See travel details, online registration and more info here. No attendance fee. Limited places. 

➢ Sign up here: https://goo.gl/forms/RXYWS8MiQgYqfLkC2 (to obtain attendance certificate, materials, coffee).

➢ Venue: C/ Juan del Rosal, 16 - 28040 Madrid. How to get there: Metro until the stop: “Ciudad Universitaria” + Bus “U” until

the stop: UNED-Juan del Rosal: http://www.ia.uned.es/llegar-etsii

Call for papers eMOOC2019

Dates: 20 - 22 May 2019 

Venue: University of Naples, Federico II in Italy

Important Dates:
16 Jan 2017: Paper submissions for Research Track.
24 Feb 2017: Notification of acceptance/rejection
20 Mar 2017: Camera-ready versions for Springer LNCS Proceedings and copyright form.

The Higher Education landscape is changing. As the information economy progresses, demand for a more highly, and differently, qualified workforce increases, and HE Institutions face the challenge of reskilling and upskilling people throughout their lives. The corporate and NGO sectors are themselves exploring the benefits of a more qualified online approach to training, and are entering the education market in collaboration with HE Institutions, but also autonomously or via new certifying agencies. Technology is the other significant player in this scenario. It allows for new, data-driven ways of measuring learning outcomes, new curriculum structures and alternative forms of recruitment strategy via people analytics.

MOOCs represent the crossroads where the three converge. Come to EMOOCs 2019 and explore the impact and future direction of open, online education on a social, political and institutional level.

The eMOOC summit has four tracks: research, business, policy and experience track.

At the MOOC crossroads: where academia and business converge

The Higher Education landscape is changing. As the information economy progresses, demand for a more highly, and differently, qualified workforce and citizens increases, and HE Institutions face the challenge of training, reskilling and upskilling people throughout their lives, rather than providing a one-time in-depth education. The corporate and NGO sectors are themselves exploring the benefits of a more qualified online approach to training, and are entering the education market in collaboration with HE Institutions, but also autonomously or via new certifying agencies. Technology is the other significant player in this fast-changing scenario. It allows for new, data-driven ways of measuring learning outcomes, new forms of curriculum definition and compilation, and alternative forms of recruitment strategy via people analytics.

At the MOOC crossroads where the three converge, we ask ourselves whether university degrees are still the major currency in the job market, or whether a broader portfolio of qualifications and micro-credentials may be emerging as an alternative. What implications does this have for educational practice? What policy decisions are required? And as online access eliminates geographical barriers to learning, but the growing MOOC market is increasingly dominated by the big American platforms, what strategic policy do European HE Institutions wish to adopt in terms of branding, language and culture?

The EMOOCs 2019 MOOC stakeholders summit comprises the consolidated four-track format of Research and Experience, Policy and Business. And will feature keynote speakers, round table and panel sessions as well as individual presentations in each track. The aim is for decision-makers and practitioners to explore innovative and emerging trends in online education delivery, and the strategic policy that supports them. Original contributions that share knowledge and carry forward the debate around MOOCs are very welcome.The number of HE institutions involved in MOOCs, and the numbers of courses and enrolled students, has increased exponentially in recent years both in Europe and beyond. One of the results of this growing MOOC movement is an increasing body of research evidence that positions itself within the established research communities in technology enhanced learning, open education and distance learning. Key trends that are accelerating HE technology adoption are blended learning design and collaborative learning as well as a growing focus on measuring learning and redesigning learning spaces, and, in the long-term, deeper learning approaches and cultures of innovation.

This track welcomes high-level papers supported by empirical evidence to provide a rigorous theoretical backdrop to the more practical approaches described in the experience track, and particularly invites contributions in the area of these key trends.

• Learning Designs – blended learning, collaborative learning, learner-generated content, open textbooks, immersive learning, relating course and content to learning outcomes
• Defining and Measuring learning – learning analytics, educational data mining, user behaviour studies, adaptive and personalisation studies, cognitive theories and deep learning
• Technology – infrastructure and interface, tools and methods to provide learning at scale; tools and methods for assessment; tools and methods for data collection and processing; blockchain technology; AI + automated feedback

Submission of Papers
This is a one-step process, via direct submission of abstract and full paper.

Full paper: up to 10 pages including references

There will be official conference proceedings for this track and submissions will be handled through EasyChair.

The use of the supplied Springer template is mandatory: https://www.springer.com/it/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

Please remember to indicate the relevant Track when you submit your paper.

Proceedings

The Proceedings of the Research Track will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series.
Submission of Work-in-Progress Short Papers

Short papers (up to 6 pages) are also accepted in this track, reflecting work in progress, for publication in Online proceedings with ISBN.

The use of the Springer template is mandatory:
https://www.springer.com/it/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

When submitting your paper, please indicate type of paper and track in the submission process.

Proceedings

The Work-in-Progress proceedings will be submitted to CEUR-WS.org for online publication. Outstanding short papers may be included in the Springer Proceedings.

Important dates:
25 February 2019: Short Paper submissions for Research Track.
25 March 2019: Notification of acceptance/rejection
29 April 2019: Camera-ready versions for online Proceedings with ISBN and copyright form

Call to action: academics should reclaim their voice in society, NOW

Enough is enough! Let's reclaim common ground, let's reclaim our voice in society!

These thoughts have been playing in my mind: why are academic voices hardly heard in contemporary societal debates? Why are there so many opinions, and so little facts? Why do we - as educators - promote lifelong learning, yet we are not reaching out to citizens in our own regions, nations, or across nations?

The reason why I ask these questions, is because I feel that a social world populated with superficial opinions is a world susceptible to populism, dichotomy ... and ultimately a mentally impoverished society. If we do not take action, than how can we take our societal role seriously. We, as scientists, as academics, as teachers have a huge societal goal.

I truly believe, that we - academics, educators, teachers - should start reclaiming our voice in society, in order to take back what we have lost: voices of reason, sound information (in all its nuanced diversity, not information delivered in black on white).

In this presentation I make a first attempt to organise my thoughts on the need to reclaim our voice in society. Let ourselves be heard across media, across groups and communities, across generations... in order to regain common sense and argument.

Academics should reclaim their voice in society, NOW! from Inge de Waard

Free 7 week online course for social change solutions @hj_dewaard #elearning

Helen J. de Waard - who picked up the link via @russdev got me onto this fabulous free online course "design kit". It's a 7 week curriculum course that looks at human-centered design and looks for sustainable solutions for social change and it requires no prior experience to get started. The course is offered through NovoEd, which also features other courses.
Another bonus is that you will get to work with a small group of people, and they suggest you link with group members from the same region (making face-to-face options possible as well). I like this mash-up of virtual and real life. And with an estimated workload of 5 hours per week.

Course link: https://novoed.com/design-kit-q3-2015


What is Human-centered Design? from IDEO.org on Vimeo.

a bit of information on the course from their website:

This seven-week course will:

• Equip you with the mindsets and methods of human-centered design so that you can be more intentional about facing and solving your current challenges
• Let you experiment with the power of human-centered design
• Teach you to identify patterns and opportunities for concept development
• Inspire you to approach challenges differently and experience how human-centered design can add new perspectives to your own work tackling poverty-related challenges
• Give you hands-on experience speaking to, prototyping for, and testing solutions with the people you're designing for

How the Course Works:

You will work through the course with a group of 2-6 people we will refer to as your “design team". It's strongly recommended you form a team with people located in your city before starting the course but you will also have the opportunity to find a team using the course platform once the course starts.

You will learn the human-centered design process by applying it to one of three pre-crafted real world design challenges (provided in the course). You will also have a choice to craft your own challenge. Each week you will explore the main human-centered design concepts through readings, case studies, and short videos. Then you'll be expected to meet in-person with your design team to get your hands dirty practicing the relevant human-centered design methods.

Throughout the course you'll have the opportunity to interact and gain inspiration from design teams around the world taking the course with you and ask questions of experienced human-centered designers when you feel stuck.

Building Your Design Team:

Many of the workshop activities will work best if your group has at least four members. Too small and you lose the benefits of a multidisciplinary team, but too large and it may be difficult to coordinate schedules and make decisions. Select people from different backgrounds or of different skill sets, and you'll have a better chance of coming up with unexpected, innovative solutions.

Blogphilosophy: #education needs to shift, creating meaningful #identities

This post builds upon the idea that education must be rethought, but not in terms of the disrupted higher education (higher ed under pressure with online learning – MOOCs etc, global educational market stressing smaller universities and colleges), but in terms of reshaping all of our identities and self-esteems for each one of us. This post is a synopsis of an upcoming position paper on the subject (paper is more elaborate).
Future and current education should provide a valued identity – person-centered, social-centered.

Turn education from job formation to meaningful identity supporter

The real challenge of education, and where I think it should be rethought comes from the idea that the first priority of education should no longer be focused on finding a job, but on creating a meaningful identity for people no matter which job (or no job) they have. Only by shifting towards a different educational goal, can education support our future, global society. Jobs are increasingly being automated, at the same time more workers than ever before take to the job market (globalisation, delocalisation). No matter how we redesign education, it will no longer be able to get everyone a job. So all the talk on improving education to better fit the job needs of companies is just humbug. The jobs shift to other parts of the world, there is more automation and new technologies that trim down job needs (e.g. 3D printing: just print your furniture or material, you do not have to ask a carpenter nor go to IKEA or any other store – bye bye stores and employees; another example is a teacher: assessments are automated, self-learning is promoted… less teachers will do). A UK report looking at the job future from a month ago underpins this statement in pointing towards job loss by 2030. So creating jobs for everyone in the future is a big impossibility, an idea from the past that lives on in the minds of many but is no longer – even today - reality. This however means that each of our ‘having work is good’ identities are under stress. Having a job should no longer be at the core of our self-esteem, our meaning of life. If we want people to feel valued and meaningful, education must be reshaped to support and create purposeful identities build on creativity and ‘keeping yourself busy is ok’.
Online learning to provide new identities in a changed less job oriented society

And I think online learning will be able to create and disseminate these new identities, and support a framework of new societal laws that can provide us with an identity. In fact, I can see how new identities are provided and taken up through online resources. Yet the current new identities are not always supportive for a global, equal, open society.

I also thoroughly belief this shift in societal – shaped by education – identities must be built with the utmost haste. As it is clear to see that the loss of meaning felt by many human beings (in many cases teenagers and youngsters not being able to find a job, and hence at a loss with their societal identity and future prospects) is showing an urgent need for replacing job meaning with non-job-related identities. To me extreme thoughts and actions only (or for the most part) become attractive, because they provide new meaning in a society that has lost the capacity to provide meaning to everyone.

The discussions that lead up to this post: disruptive higher ed talks

Dave Cormier (learning first principle post here and response to Stephen Downes here) , Stephen Downes and Matt Crosslin have been engaging in a discussion looking at where education is heading in 2015: the disruption, the reorganisation, predictions on the verge of this new year. Their asynchronous dialogue got to me as I think we must look further than the institutional educational system.

Industrial age: purpose of education was to get a job

During the Industrial Age education seemed the best way forward to shape people for jobs in production. Ford paved the way, different industries followed and new types of jobs were created. As jobs and industry were growing, the hope and trust in this way of life where grew. The job growth (thanks to wars?) was booming and as a result even women started to be picked up in this work stream, or march towards universal employment. The laws of society were adapted (universal human rights), the prospects sounded wonderful and the welfare state was deemed a possibility driven by politics in combination with economic growth.

Job as major societal identity

The educational system was tuned to these new jobs, creating a scaffold towards these jobs. Once in a job, you might want to climb the ladder or follow a career path, but it was equally possible to simple stick to the job your whole life.

As such a whole set of societal values was anchored to having a job. Having a job meant you were a ‘good father’, a keeper of the family. Later on a good job was equally useful for women. Having a job provided a stamp of societal approval: you supported your own family, you were a meaningful member of society and economy, you were paying taxes to create the welfare state. Your actions had meaning both to yourself and to others. Your life was meaningful if you had a job. You got an identity. This identity took shape as you went through all (however many or few) educational steps.

Stigma for those not being able to get a job

But with every crisis these job related values affected those without a job as well. Those who weren’t able to find a job got stigmatised. If you were not able to get a job, you were and are not a valuable member of society. You are not a good provider, you are not a valuable citizen, in fact you are worthless. Not only that, society will even look at you as an economic and social loss, someone that can be scorned for his/her unwilling responsibility towards society.

Why do I think online learning will be able to provide new, less job oriented societal meanings?

Identity is strengthened through MOOC

If you look at cMOOC, there was always a sense of meaning for those learners having gone through those courses. Self-worth, personal growth, in some cases professional growth. In my own research the same pointers towards identity pop up in those learners engaged in big sized online courses. I have seen it happen from the first MOOC I followed, through the MOOCs I organised, and now by watching the feedback from MOOC’rs taking action in one of the major MOOC platforms. But it seems only little attention is paid to that particular identity bonus that comes along with MOOCs. It is mostly related to jobs, but not to personal satisfaction and meaning.

A small leap from learner-centered to personal identity support

MOOCs – at best – are learner-centered. As such personal identity is easily supported by MOOCs, as they provide a wide range of interests, and possible networks. And all of us need networks to have a sense of meaning. And more.

Conclusion

Education should step away from its century long idea that it’s priority is to get people into jobs. It should instead start to provide a lifelong learning path towards supporting a personal identity, letting people find what makes them tick in a peaceful way, creating multiple paths of meaning in a social learning world.
Well, I hope I have put my point across in some clear way, and if not tell me where I forget to add some basic arguments for this is an obvious draft. This post is one of the results of my past reflections on where I want to go with my future one’s I get my PhD, adding to the eLearning and mobile projects I have been engaged with in the past (working with budgets up to 100.00 EUR). And I came to the conclusion that I would love to set out my job along these lines. So if you know of any position that might just fit that train of thought, let me know. In the meantime, I will create an identity based on the above, hopefully giving me the meaning I need to lead a peaceful, content life until the next job comes along (money wise… yes, economy also needs to shift to enable less job based societies). Educational philosophy, here I come!

New #gender & #mlearning news mobiles to end violence

The Gender and Mobile Learning Newsletter is a great read and is now available. There are links to mobile learning events such as the upcoming mobile learning week at UN headquarters in Paris France (17 - 21 February 2014), and the mobile learning workshop 'saving lives through mobile' organized in Barcelona, Spain on 25 February 2014.

If you have any gender/mobile related projects or events planned, make sure to let Ronda Zelezny-Green know and she will get your projects highlighted in upcoming newsletters (do remember the 2-monthly frequency of the newsletter).

Synopsis of other topics mentioned in the newsletter
How mobiles can help stop Gender-Based Violence 

The past three years – and more pointedly the past 12 months – have laid witness to monumental, if not heartbreaking, incidents of gender-based violence. The gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi last December; the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl left for dead in a pit latrine in Western Kenya last June; the mass sexual assault of women in Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolution in Egypt and since; all were high profile atrocities that ignited outrage around the world.

In the aftermath of each of these, mobile technology solutions and internet-based advocacy campaigns surged. It’s almost like clockwork: violence happens, a technology response follows. And 2013 has seen an explosion of new efforts.

Winning mLearning projects:
The GSMA mWomen Programme is delighted to announce that Accion Internationaland the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) are the latest recipients of its Innovation Fund grants and the first grantees outside of Africa.  They join current grantees Tigo Tanzania, Etisalat Africa, Orange Mali and Airtel Uganda in developing innovative offerings designed to address the gender gap in women’s access and use of mobile in their respective markets.

#emoocs2014 solutions to including vulnerable learners in #MOOC

This is the brief overview of the talk that I give at eMOOCs2014 on the subject of challenges for conceptualising EU MOOC for vulnerable learner groups. The full paper can be viewed here (it has the full argumentation and possible solutions. With this paper the authors wanted to push the discussion on the topic of including vulnerable learner groups.

Just followed a session on MOOC and collaborations with developing regions. Can the diversity existing in MOOC be distilled from looking at the speaker picture shared here? (I know, it is easy to use the panel for doubting the reach of solutions based on inclusion... but I cannot help but add it).

Please share your ideas, possible solutions you have used/build or would like to see happen in MOOC.

possible solutions to include vulnerable learners in MOOC from Inge Ignatia de Waard

Blogphilosophy: learning is a way out of life's options given at birth

Life is a long strand of actions, choices, forced decisions, or results that can be causes themselves and causes leading to results... my learning path cannot be called normal nor without its challenges, nevertheless, I made it. Meaning: I got out of a precarious place, I left chaos behind me. I now have a job, a house, a partner that loves and loved me even when the chips were down. I survived and all of a sudden I realized when looking what happens in the world today ... life was easy.

If you have ever been poor, or challenged, or have fallen victim to one of the many temptations that lead to a life of misery and complexity, you know why at a certain point you pull yourself together and start learning. For if you had to fight for a long period of time, simply to keep on living, there is only one way out. Granted, a way out that has many faces, but the same at its core: learning.

We learn to get out of the mess we are in, or - less dramatic and urgent - to improve our lives. In the first case, we cannot but learn the hard way.

Yesterday I got word that one of the children from the day care center my son is at, will be banned. Her parents no longer have the money. They are in debt. Having been poor, I picked up certain familiar traits indicating financial challenges creeping up on them. Nothing big, the last thing any of us want is that poverty becomes apparent at first glance, but nevertheless those of us who have been there, see it.
That little girl of not even two years of age will now stay at home. Her family situation is tough and with no quick fixes.As soon as finances become a heavy burden, family life gets harder. Everything becomes a discussion. Tensions arise. Everything becomes a priority, and sadly every choice deletes another priority. So here she is, that little girl, amidst dire straights, no longer at a nanny for 7 hours a week. She was at ease at the nanny. There she got organic fresh food, a good and safe shelter, and positive stimulation's. During every day at the nursery that little girl would learn from her peers, have no or less worries for a big part of her waking day. Now, she will be out. And once a child is out of daycare in my region, it is almost impossible to get back in. Because she will now be home, the chances of her parents being able to earn extra money diminish as well... she risks being caught in a downward spiral simply because of her position since birth.

In the same week I heard that the 21 year old Somalian athlete Samya Yusuf Omar, who carried the Olympic flag for her country during the Beijing games perished. Dead because she was on a path to improve her living conditions, her chances. She wanted to compete during the London Olympics and had the potential, but ... on her way to find a coach (she did not get funds in her own country), she died during a shipwreck, while escaping her living conditions in an attempt to increase her chances, attain her full potential. Living conditions she tackled were undoubtedly plenty: sports, endurance, perseverance, creating chances ... unfortunately her birth chances put her in a difficult starting position and because of that, at a certain point she embarked on a fatal trip in a raggedy ship, heading North to Fort Europe.  

The thing is, learning is not simply getting a degree, having some paper indicating you went through hours of books, assignments... For the most of us learning is the only way out of personal challenges, and its a hard road without guarantees. And what is worse, hardly any of us get to learn what it takes to learn. Learning takes a lot of unwritten skills. That is why learning in any form is so dear to my heart. I need to believe that when we all pitch in, we can make a change. Create more chances... not to become the president or prime minister of any country, but to attain peace of mind, or peace all together.

In the meantime my son has two mothers watching over him, both of them now working in education. We know the benefits of education and of the simple act of learning. We know how the system works, what the pitfalls are and why simply learning to learn will improve his chances for a healthy, happy life. For us, he does not need to become anything else but a happy human being, able to find his way. Not sure if it will work, but ... at least there are increased chances. Would not it be lovely to create these chances for all of us?

Does #mobile learning really make a difference in this world?

Years ago I met Devaji Patil in Bangalore, India and … I related to his spirit and wisdom. Devaji is a philosopher at heart and a medical doctor by profession. In his new job he wants to set up mobile health projects, but at the same time he wants to make sure they will be durable and basically… make sense to the people it is designed to help. So he challenged me with some tough questions comprising ethics, meaningfulness, gender challenges and effectiveness of learning with mobiles. I could get some thoughts in, but I feel many more people are needed to answer his questions in full, so feel free to add ideas or send Devaji additional answers.

1. how are we sure that mobile learning is really empowering

For ages people, both philosophers and lay-people, have been discussing the empowerment of learning or education in general. Looking at the Millennium goals, I can see that most of us still believe in it, but even the most basic primary education is not reached yet. I think this is due to lack of durable, educational vision. Any learning, including mLearning will only be empowering if it is made accessible to all, inspiring, comprehensible, participative as well as collaborative, with guidance for those learners that feel the need to have a guide-on-the-side and most of all durable within a flexible learning environment. Looking at teachers that are real corner stones of education, they know how to appeal to their learners, lift their spirits, inspire them to reach their full potential. That type of teacher is creative, knows how to reach his/her learners and find the strength within the learner. This being said, I feel that every learning is based on inspirational, creative people with vision and trust in the future of their learners. As such I am sure Devaji that if you set up mLearning courses, they will be empowering.  

2. how to actually negotiate the barrier of technology to an 'illiterate' health worker?

The best way to negotiate the barrier is by using what they use, or trying to reimagine new technology with how they use old or known technology. It is not necessary to read if you have a phone, in that case speech can be enough to exchange knowledge/information. So basic cell-phones can be used as help-lines, where patients phone in, and health workers phone back.

If the spoken feedback of the health care workers are than added to a data-base after ‘speech to text’ software, this database can be used for future cases. At the same time radio transmissions offer a great, non-reading, durable way of getting knowledge (continued medical education) distributed to large crowds in a less expensive way, and radio is a mobile device. A case study using radio for this reason (in Philippines for rural farmer women) is linked here (http://www.tistr.or.th/RAP/publication/1999/1999_08_rome.pdf ). What strikes me is that funding is much more difficult to get for this type of proven, mobile learning than small scale smartphone projects (but that is another discussion).

3. with rapidly changing technology ... what is happening to pedagogy? Does pedagogy change too ? As fast as technology ?

Good pedagogy stands apart from technology, but technology can be used to get good pedagogy out to the masses and via distance education (reaching the difficult to reach, in every sense of the word). I feel that pedagogy is very human, and as humans only change slowly, good pedagogy will also only adapt to the pace in which humans can reach their own bigger potential. However with the evolution of technology, the variety of teaching/learning that can be reached via distance education does evolve more rapidly than before: which means that more people can be reached based on the same concepts of good pedagogy (e.g. participation between rural health care workers is now possible by using simple cell-phones).

4. Are we in a position to make 'learning' a central theme of Health systems strengthening if we are then where is it being seen if not why not ?

The knowledge and application of durable and scalable mLearning is still in its early beginnings. In just a couple of years’ time mLearning starts to take off. This means that a lot of projects did not take off due to lack of knowledge about all the factors impacting a project or target population, other projects do take off but are sometimes stopped due to non-durable options… And sadly those projects not attaining what they were meant to obtain are rarely disseminated, although most of us are eager to learn from mistakes to ensure successful future endeavors.

To me learning or training should be at the center of any system, including health systems. The concept of Lifelong Learning did not come out of the blue, but came out of an awareness that constant education will be a must in a world where changes happen increasingly rapid.  

A stable, durable health system will have learning and specifically continued medical education embedded in its core, for without keeping health care workers, health managers… up to date on latest changes, the patients will not be reached with optimal health care. In relation to this, I share this National Health Service (United Kingdom) paper focusing on 29 recommendations for embedding mLearning in their health care system http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.be/2011/04/how-can-health-within-clinics-be.html these recommendations do not always apply to more challenged regions, but some of them can indeed be implemented.

5 Why is human interface still important. ?

For trust, real understanding, and for reaching those that need some time to voice the problems they are facing, and to reach those that feel insecure or unable to share text.

6. How to / Why / Where/ When to place technology enhanced learning in health systems that are not just weak ... but actually in a disintegrated state?

That is something else, if a system is in a disintegrated state it needs to be rebuild from the ground up I guess. In that case technology might be used to start communicating about most urgent issues but … if a basis is unstable, you can be sure that any rapidly designed technological addition will only amount to even more disruption.

7. Is technology gender sensitive ? Technology is definitely gender sensitive. It has the old stigma (male’s are better at it), the new social-economic realities (women have less access to technology) and the gender digital divide. There are exceptions, but it is an uphill battle to get women on an equal opportunity base regarding technology or its related solutions. To that topic I refer to GSMA’s woman mobile initiative: http://www.mwomen.org   

These types of subjects will be covered and discussed during MobiMOOC in week 2 by John Traxler and week 3 by Michael Sean Gallagher, so feel free to join the discussions. Looking at the participants I am sure they will be able to add much more solutions and ideas than I can. 

#mHealth a #diabetes #mobile project in DRCongo, Cambodia and the Philippines

Most of us want to make some kind of difference, making the world a better place. Josefien Van Olmen is one of these wonderful researchers at ITM that gets it done. A few months back she asked me to get involved in a diabetes project which would involve basic cell-phones. We all got our heads together (doctors, social scientists and technologists) and set up a really cool and easy to build and implement diabetes project. For those interested a quick overview of how it was set up:

Josefien drew up the medical side of things, taken into account national differences, regional challenges, medical ethics, etcetera. She is a very intelligent expert researcher and she drives her people hard but with an incredible warmth of heart. Will not link to any medical framework here, as this is part of Josefien’s work, but feel free to contact her if you want to learn more about it: Josefien’s LinkedIn page can be found here.

Needs going into the project:

• Getting in touch with diabetes people (diabetes 1 and 2) who are living in remote areas or who have a hard time getting to their health clinics/health care workers/diabetes educators.
• Keep the diabetes project at low cost,
• Make use of the personal cell phones the diabetes patients have (cheap cell phones, mostly java enabled) to make them feel comfortable with the technology of the program.
• Make it generic so other organizations in the country (or elsewhere) would be able to reproduce it for their own purposes,
• Get people empowered to use their cell phone for practical life changing/enhancing topics.
• Make the program strong and durable by providing patient records
• Keep the program easy to use, so health care workers as well as users will be kept motivated to use it even in difficult times.
• Allow the content and communications to be written or performed in different languages (French, Khmer, …).
• Keep control of the program and the health messages.
• Easily build health messages to send around in bulk.

Solution:

• First of all working closely with the diabetes managers in the countries: they know their patients, the challenges for their specific regions. Getting a participative project going from the start.
• Finding a low cost (free and open source!) solution that works with basic cell phones, offers the option to build your own reports/forms, and allows all the communication that is happening between the patients, the health care workers and the diabetes managers to be put into long lasting and transparent patient records => one solution the Frontline SMS medic solution.
• Testing the program: the most difficult part was finding the right modem to get frontline sms to work properly (we used a Huawei gsm modem in the end, after trying quite some other types of gsm modems).
• Getting a frontlinesms expert in to fine tune to the program’s needs. Limbanazo Kapindula was/is the man of the moment. He just finished a mHealth project in Malawi (blogpost and his presentation on the project can be found here).

Some resources
If you are interested in testing out the frontlinesms medic for your own purposes, feel free to download the frontlineSMS medic program here or check out this video and start your own project yourself or with your team.



This diabetes program is now being set up right now and will be ready for roll-out in the very near future. Josefien, you sure know how to make a difference. I know how important it is to get connected to my fellow diabetics and health care workers, thank you for your great work and the opportunity to work with you!