The e-learning course in health financing was conceptualised by Dr. N. Devadasan. He has a rich experience in the field and has been teaching this subject in many universities. Keeping in mind the current public health scenario, where the competency in health financing is an important asset for the professionals and policy makers, the course was designed to bridge the knowledge gap in the field and strengthen the capacity of professionals in health financing.
The first batch of e-learning course in health financing was launched in April this year. From hundreds of applications, we shortlisted 28 applicants for enrollment in the course. We have a mix of academicians, researchers, government and non-government professionals in our current batch. The batch has representation from National Health Mission (NHM), ESI,etc. There are participants from UNICEF and NGOs like ACCESS Health International, HSRII,SAMA, MYRADA, PHFI and other organisations like International union against tuberculosis and lung diseases. We also have participants from academic institutions like Puducherry Institute of Medical Sciences and IIHMR. Through our e-learning course we have reached participants across the country from Rajasthan in west to Odisha in east, Delhi in north to Kerala to south.
The course consists of four modules, each module has three units and each unit has three to four classrooms that are powerpoint presentations with audio and video recordings. Classrooms also have corresponding exercises to test the knowledge of participants. We have some interesting learning activities in the course for making the learning more practical and keeping the participants motivated. Each module has an activity called ‘From the field’. In this section, we interview the key people from the field and bring their stories to participants. Another engaging feature is ‘Crossword Puzzle’, where after each module participants can unlock a level and get clues to solve the puzzle. Another interactive feature is ‘FAQs’, where in the Subject Matter Expert (SME) answers the queries of participants in the form of video than just typing on the discussion forum.
We are systematically tracking the progress of our participants and give feedback whenever needed. We hope that the course will be a success and we will be running several batches of the course in the near future.
The Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru in collaboration with Centre for Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada hosted the second regional course on Good Health Research Practice in Bengaluru. Five teams with public health research backgrounds from across the country participated in the 4-day training where they were introduced to concepts and principles of good health research practices. Overall, the 4-day training involved a lot of interaction between participants and the facilitators.
Diljith Kannan, training coordinator and Dr.Aneesha Ahluwalia, tutor for e-learning courses attended the eighth annual workshop of the LINQED educational network. The workshop was organised at the Uganda Martyrs University (Faculty of Health Sciences), Kampala, Uganda from 17th till 20th May 2016.
Started in 2008, LINQED refers to Learning together on quality in education in international health, working on quality in education and linking up people. It is a network of educational and government institutions providing postgraduate level training in human and animal tropical medicine, public health and international health.
LINQED organises annual workshops that focus on pedagogy, quality assurance and e-learning. The theme for this year was ‘Improving education leadership and research, cooperative learning and critical thinking in higher education’.
The focus areas of the workshop:
Cooperative learning
Critical thinking
Educational research
Education leadership
The workshop was a good networking platform, where the members got an opportunity to interact with participants from various countries and share their experiences. Diljith Kannan presented about quality assurance and IPH experience with e-learning. The workshop helped IPH members gain new perspectives about the learning activities and education research. It was like a stepping stone towards introducing new learning activities in their e-learning courses. The workshop was also promising in terms of providing us support for research in the field of e-learning.
In collaboration with the Department of Health & Family Welfare, Tumkur District, the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru hosted a 5 day “Induction Training” programme for newly appointed Primary Health Centre (PHC) Medical Officers for Tumkur district. Tumkur is the first district in the state to orient newly appointed Medical Officers. The 5 day programme was attended by 31 doctors (that included specialists) and was well appreciated by all. The participants felt that it gave them a good introduction to their roles and responsibilities, the district staff felt that this would make the PHC Medical Officer’s perform better.
Application of the peer learning principles in the field of education has a long history. Lot of research has been done by psychologists, sociologists and educators on this and results have been positive. Peer learning has been seen as an effective methodology for gain deeper understanding of the concepts by formal or informal interaction among the peers. Peer learning promotes active participation among students and gives them a space to re-enforce their own learning. Since, the students share common educational or professional backgrounds, it creates interest in the topic. It also gives students a platform to build their communication, presentation and teaching skills.
We at IPH, used one of the aspects of peer learning principles, for our e-learning course in Public Health Management (ePHM). Based on their performance in the course, we selected the top ten students of 2015 batch. We invited them to take classroom sessions for their peers. The theme of the classroom session was – “One Challenge – One Public Health Management Principle”. The students had to talk about one challenge they faced at their workplace and how they applied one public health management principle to overcome the same. The objective of this exercise was to give an opportunity to the students to share their experiences from the field with the fellow students and at the same time give them a feel of how we record our online classrooms.
The response from the invited students was amazing. The students who were based in Bengaluru visited our office and recorded a session with us. Others who were residing outside Bengaluru had a hangout or Skype session with us and recorded the classroom. The students took sessions on different topics like community participation, systems thinking, leadership and development, breast feeding and health systems dynamics framework. We converted their sessions into online classrooms and uploaded it on our online platform, Moodle for sharing with their peers.
It was very interesting to see how the students, who are busy professionals also, took out time and prepared Powerpoint presentations and recorded sessions with us. Our next step is to understand from students how they benefited from this learning methodology. Since, this is the era of experimentation, we would love to step ahead and explore other peer learning methodologies in our courses for enhanced learning experience!
You can catch a glimpse of the peer classroom sessions by clicking on the image:
The response from the invited students was amazing. The students who were based in Bengaluru visited our office and recorded a session with us. Others who were residing outside Bengaluru had a hangout or Skype session with us and recorded the classroom. The students took sessions on different topics like community participation, systems thinking, leadership and development, breast feeding and health systems dynamics framework. We converted their sessions into online classrooms and uploaded it on our online platform, Moodle for sharing with their peers.
