This book is available as an open access pdf. Here is an extract from chapter 2 on Social Learning Theories.
Holistic approaches to learning are agnostic as to method. Drawing from connectivist and older models, they valorize diversity and the socially distributed cognition afforded by the read-write Web and other publishing models, accepting that every learning experience is unique, and every learner’s needs are different. Connectivist approaches, for all their extensive reliance on networks of people engaging socially, are at heart focused on the individual—specifically, the individual’s learning. Holistic models embrace the fact that it is sometimes more important that a group learns, rather than an individual, especially in collectivist cultures (Potgieter et al., 2006). Holistic models recognize that, sometimes, guidance is what is most needed, that people can learn without direct engagement with others and, even that transmittive instructionist models of teaching have a place. p.61.
In the next post I will explain the emphasis placed in the quote.
Jon Dron and Terry Anderson (2014) Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media, AU Press.
Open source, open science, open data, open access, open education, open learning -- This fall Stanford faculty and librarians are working with international partners to offer the innovative free (no-cost) course Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning on the OpenEdX platform.
The course provides an introduction to the important concept of openness from a variety of perspectives, including library and information studies, education, publishing, economics, politics, and more. Open Knowledge is international and multi-institutional, bringing together instructors and students from Stanford University (USA), Fordham University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Simon Frasier University (Canada), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (Mexico), and the rest of the world.
Learn more about the concept of "open", develop your digital literacy skills, and connect with peers from around the world.
Lauren A Maggio, MS (LIS), MA Lecturer, Department of Medicine Director of Research and Instruction Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center Stanford University Medical Center 300 Pasteur Drive, L109, Stanford, CA 94305-5123 lmaggio AT stanford.edu @laurenmaggio
HIFA profile: Lauren Maggio is Director of Research and Instruction at Stanford University in the USA. Professional interests: Information Literacy, Open Access, Open Data libraries. lmaggio AT stanford.edu
[*Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): MOOC = Massive Open Online Course]
On Wednesday I visited HC2014. Having the week off and with the event literally on the doorstep (London in 2015) it was very convenient.
I'd received an email the evening before on the new informatics federation and heard the official announcement in the opening session. My last HC event was 2005, my first 1986 also in Manchester if I remember correctly.
I posted the federation news this morning. On the BCS stand I picked up a copy of the INFORMATICS IN PRIMARY CARE.
This journal is open access. Despite the title and perhaps illustrative of the dependencies within and need to integrate health (and social care) the journal's coverage is broad and inclusive:
We are interested in how computerised medical records can better record the clinical status of patients and can be used to measure the quality, safety and efficiency of health care professionals and organisations – including primary care, hospital, mental health, and social and community care. The scope of the journal also includes integrated care and how genetic data might be used to enhance health care.
Given the record of public and private sector led IT projects it was refreshing to hear of the GDS's approach being user-centred, the extension of 7 design principles and Mark's previous experience. It's clearly too late for the health care sector to coin and create the Needotron - GDS beat us to it.
Drupal 8 is looking formidable both in its potential and the (learning) stack it presents. Another great session to pick out was - A whole new world for multilingual sites in Drupal 8 by Gábor Hojtsy. The progress here is phenomenal and even though incomplete it is a major achievement and a credit to the Drupal community.
It's humbling as it reminds me to post some introductions to Hodges' model on W2tQ in several languages.
As to being user-centred, the Harmony Forum is a real tease. I know a forum will not moderate itself (is that the new Sorcerer's Apprentice?) and yet time is of the essence. Harmony is one for me to watch - so I'm signed up for the newsletter. Two sessions on Twig and Entities rounded up a busy few days.
This began on Thursday with Cutty Sark, the Royal Greenwich Observatory (learned much from their interactive designs), Turner and the Sea, The British Library - Beautiful Science(60-90 mins ample), and Ibsen's Ghostsat Trafalgar Studios.
I was also able to visit a university yesterday and meet a member of faculty who used Hodges' model many years ago. Here's hoping that some of the materials can be retrieved even though it seems unlikely. I hope to keep in touch with this nursing contact (and not just for the dinner!). I've met several other people here, the Drupal community is another great asset - and with thanks to the sponsors who make these events feasible for many of us.
Output from Needotron
I'll end this post back with Mr O'Neill and the GDS.
I wonder to what extent healthcare figured in the flood deliberations?
Wikipedians and Translators Without Borders have been collaborating for more than two years in an effort to improve access to medical information. [1] Over this time we have improved more than 30 key medical articles in English and are working on translating them into around 60 languages. This effort has resulted in more than 3 million words of translated text. [2]
The work is having an impact. Wikipedia’s medical content is the single most read medical resource globally, [3] receiving about 5 billion page views in 2013 for around 180,000 articles across 286 languages. It is also often re-used by other sources including university textbooks by Boundless.com which reaches more than 3 million students, [4] Google, and many others. Additionally the Wikimedia Foundation through partnerships with cellphone companies has secured Wikipedia browsing without data charges for more than 500 million people in the developing world (currently rolling out in many regions with more carriers being added). [5]
Most of these efforts are accomplished entirely by volunteers. Volunteers who believe that all people deserve free and easy access to high quality health care information in the language of their choosing. The number of people currently working on these efforts are however small. To expand our work we need more people to join us who share our dream. For many aspects of the project there is no formal registration required. One can simply begin editing on Wikipedia.
If one is interested in translating from English to their native language they can contact enrique at proz dot com. Currently we are primarily looking for people to help in non European languages as in major languages much content already exists. Additionally we need people who can help add already translated article to Wikipedia. It requires a bit of time to figure out the Media Wiki markup but not too much. We are specifically looking for help adding articles in Arabic, Polish and Dutch right now.
Please let us know if you would be interested or wish to learn more.
James Heilman & Lori Thicke
MD, CCFP(EM), Wikipedian Founder and President of Wiki Project Med Foundation Translators without Borders
From December 2013 to March 2014, mPowering Frontline Health Workers is supporting an in-depth exploration here on the HIFA forum around the information and learning needs of Community health workers (CHWs), and how we can meet those needs more effectively and efficiently over the coming years. Further information: http://tinyurl.com/hifa97
The Lancet Global Health published a paper on 2nd August 2013 that we can all use in our advocacy to increase the availability and use of healthcare information in low- and middle-income countries. The paper was written by three HIFA Country Representatives for India – Soumyadeep Bhaumik, Tamoghna Biswas, Pranab Chetterjee – together with the HIFA Coordinator, Neil Pakenham-Walsh. The full text is freely available, open-access, here.
Here is a brief extract: ‘Should governments be held responsible for ensuring that every citizen and every health professional has access to the information they need to protect their own health and the health of those they care for? Should governments be held to account for, and to stop, any action that denies the availability of health information, or that misinforms the public or health professionals contrary to scientific evidence? The answers to these questions are yes and yes, as clearly stated in international human rights law.’
I have been working in mental health nursing in Rwanda, I have seen a significant need for a mental health nurses handbook and guide. At the request of the faculty at Kigali Health Institute, I have complied two electronic texts.
1.Mental Health Nursing I: Diagnosis, Treatment Guidelines and Standards of Care : The African Context. and 2.Mental Health Nursing II: Vulnerable Populations of Africa and Emerging Best Practices.
They have links to research, questions that guide the student reading, and then clinical cases for integration of what they have learned in each chapter. They are based on an 8 week course with 3 classes per week.
I would like to place them on the internet for free access but don't know how that is done.
They would be applicable for any nurses, mental health or general nurses working in post-conflict countries. The first handbook uses heavily the WHO MH Gap intervention guide which is excellent and COHSASA standards of care. The second book includes mental health in primary care, chronic mentally ill in villages, pregnant women and infants, refugees, women who are victims of gender based violence, Incarcerated mentally ill, and traditional healers. It is challenging but could be available to anyone with motivation and an internet connection.
Perhaps resources like this could be compiled into a program of study with internet oversight. I would be interested in pursuing this concept with others. I will be returning to the US in a few days but would like to see these ebook widely distributed and utilized. Does anyone have any ideas how this could be accomplished?
As the poster demonstrates and Millwood's notes explain learning theories are very varied and yet a constant in terms of teacher education. What is less permanent is the significance of learning styles, which are included above. I wonder if there is an A3 poster addressing that question? A different treatment would be needed, one that might for example show the ups and downs of the literature? What theoretical underpinning has been proposed for learning styles? What are the connections to forms of literacy? I had a brief search, but found nothing to compare with the above effort.
Richard Millwood has provided a great resource and is seeking feedback. The pdf version is very readable on my laptop in HD; plus there is a CMap tools version with links.
It seems blended learning really is the hybrid? It is traditional in face-to-face sense, but can be found in multiple combinations within Millwood's formulation. Is there a place for gestalt learning - a further link with learning styles?
I'm subscribed to a Vygotsky list that is very active; most of the posts pass like e-leaves in the wind-e, a case of info overload.
Vygotsky has a place above: it is a small place. So it looks like there really is a lot to take in. Oh joy!
'USAID and the Schools of Public Health at JHU and GWU welcome you to the inaugural issue of GHSPan open-access, peer-reviewed journal for the global health community, particularly program implementers, to contribute to and benefit from a dialogue based on science and practical programmatic experience...' 'We foresee that public health practitioners, university colleagues, donors, and other development partners will be able to contribute to and benefit from a dialogue based on science and experience of what works for field programs.... GHSP will take a multidisciplinary approach to the science and practice of global health... We look forward to your engagement and feedback.'
'Formal research definitely helps. But it is not enough. We also need programmatic know-how, including experience-based knowledge and 'lessons learned.'.
I've been reading the messages about mental health and information needs in low resource settings. I agree that it's still such a disappointment that certain publishers refuse to make these core documents / books (like Where there is no Psychiatrist and Where there is no Child Psychiatrist) open access. Hope 2013 will bring changes......
I know a few free online/download alternatives for the mental health field:
In the Hesperian.org bookstore you find free downloads of a couple of health care guides in different languages including 'Where Women have No Doctor'. This book contains a brief mental health care chapter. Other helpful Hesperian books like 'Disabled Village Children', and the 'famous one' 'Where there is no Doctor'. Link: http://hesperian.org/books-and-resources
Another is the WHO 'mhGAP Intervention Guide for mental, neurological and substance use disorders in non-specialized health settings'. Free download in English, French and Spanish. This is a 109 pages decision tree manual for depression, psychosis, bipolar disorders, epilepsy, developmental and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents, dementia, alcohol use disorders, drug use disorders, self-harm/suicide and other significant emotional or medically unexplained complaints. It contains also a chapter on 'general principles of care' and a brief chapter on 'advanced psychological interventions'. Link: http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/mhGAP_intervention_guide/en/index.html
For mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings the WHO/World Vision/War Trauma Foundation publication is very helpful: 'Psychological First Aid: Guide for field workers', 60 pages and lots of illustrations. Link for the PDF: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789241548205_eng.pdf
For psychosocial support of children the NGO HealthNetTPO offers free downloads of their 'Psychosocial Care Package Children' with Modules, Tools and Publications sections. It contains information that describes the rationale, content and step-by-step implementation of the separate components of a comprehensive psychosocial care package (such as a Classroom Based Intervention, Counseling, Clinical Supervision, Screening and Psycho-education). Link: http://www.healthnettpo.org/en/1311/psychosocial-care-package-children.html
In the field of psychosocial support for children and adults after emergencies or in HIV projects, the IFRC Psychosocial Centre offers free downloads of their manual like 'Psychosocial interventions - A handbook', 'Community-based psychosocial support - A training kit', 'Children's Resilience Programme' and more. Link: http://psp.drk.dk/sw40688.asp
This is where I stumbled on in the last few years. Hope it is helpful. Maybe I should write a blog post about it on the in2mentalhealth website, in order to make a comprehensive list which is available on the internet for a longer period of time. So, if you have any additions please reply in this discussion or mail me with the link!
Plus: Thanks for the comprehensive list Roos. Handicap International developed a Policy Paper on : "Mental health in post-crisis and development contexts" which can be found here [PDF, 1.1Mb]:
Do feel free to add this to your list of materials. [ *see note below ]
Kind regards
Antony Antony Duttine Rehabilitation Technical Advisor in Global Health
[ *Note from HIFA2015 moderator: Neil Pakenham-Walsh
I would also like to mention the Essential Health Links (EHL) gateway. EHL was set up by myself and Lenny Rhine while I was working at INASP in the late 90s and early 00s. It is now hosted by AED Satellife and Lenny continues to maintain it on a voluntary basis. The Mental Health and Psychiatry section is available here: http://www.healthnet.org/essential-links/mental-health-and-psychiatry
Essential Health Links has more than 750 websites selected according to criteria such as appropriateness for low-resource settings and free access. "Essential Health Links is offered freely for use as a template by others (e.g. medical school libraries, ministries of health, publishers, libraries, NGOs) to develop customised gateways on their own websites. This approach should reduce the risk of duplication of effort while maximising the usefulness of the gateway for specific target groups."
I'm sending forward the open link to a special issue of Studies in Social Justice on the Politics of Recovery and Resilience in Mental Health Care. Some of you helped Alison Howell ad I through the process of co-editing this special issue (thanks!), and for others this might be of use in you scholarship and teaching. The issue offers a variety of critiques on how the recovery model, participation, and resilience are being taken up in practice, as well as some modes of resistance. My hope is that this issue will compliment the work that you are all already undertaking. Here's the link:
This week, we celebrate open access week – an event aimed at bringing attention to this rapidly emerging form of scientific publication and its ethical imperatives.
Traditionally, knowledge breakthroughs and scientific discoveries are shared through publication in academic journals. Peer-reviewed and highly competitive, careers are made and broken on the number and impact of these publications.
With the complex, long-standing hierarchy of journal ranking, scientific publishing is big business. From a distance, one might assume that scientific publications aim to maximise the dissemination of ideas, break down barriers to science and make knowledge accessible to the masses – but this is not actually the case.
The publication process
When a scientist, whether in the field, the laboratory or the hospital, makes a discovery, she puts her ideas into an academic paper and submits it to a journal. The journal’s editors decide whether it’s relevant to the scope of the publication, and if it is, they (usually) send it on to a small group of the researcher’s peers.
These are other specialists in the field who will read and give feedback on the paper. If they think the work is worthwhile, and they have no changes to suggest (which is seldom), then the paper will be published in a future issue of that journal.
At this point, no one has paid for anything. The authors don’t pay to submit the article, the journal doesn’t pay for the scientists’ work and the peer reviewers are voluntary. Even the editors are often unpaid, unless they can integrate this service into their professional work.
Journals seek remuneration through subscriptions or once-off access fees by the user – often in the order of US$30 per paper. Those of us lucky enough to have an affiliation to a university, or live in Denmark where the government spends many millions on subscriptions for the entire population can access scientific knowledge free of charge.
Open access
Open access publication differs in one very important way from “traditional” academic publishing. Instead of the individual paying to access an article, or buying a subscription, researchers pay for the publication of their work, often out of their research funds.
In the order of US$1,000-$2,500 per publication, this article processing fee is payable when and if the paper is accepted – and it’s routinely waived for researchers from low and middle-income nations. This means that while the editorial and peer review process are the same as above, access to the published work is free forever and available openly (hence, open access) online.
The traditional publishing paradigm can be regressive and exclusive. Think for a moment how it works: I am a researcher, I do research in developing countries. What if I was to go there; take the time, resources, ideas or even blood samples from thousands of local people; take the information back to my university; access all the scientific knowledge I need in order to develop the work; and then publish my findings in journals for which there’s an access fee of one week’s wages for the people involved in my study.
Sure I might be able to send them a copy, but for the vast majority of people in that community, science remains out of reach. Now, these study participants may also have no internet access for open access sourcing, but many now do and at least the barrier to knowledge is not put up by the scientific community itself.
Similarly, in high-income nations, it’s still the wealthy, the highly educated or those at higher-education institutions who have greatest access to the vast majority of published science. How is this just?
And what happens when we add an additional layer of ethical consideration: that these researchers and their work is often is paid for by society, by taxpayers, through public funding. How can we then justify publishing it in academic media inaccessible to the vast majority who paid for it?
We can’t just blame researchers or the research community for this – and we’re not saying that because we’re researchers. Academic performance and assessment, in the large part, is determined by the amount and impact of one’s publications. The older “traditional” journals have greater histories and so researchers are almost coerced into publishing with these journals.
Some good news
The good news is that things are changing. In the first decade of the 21st century, we have seen an explosion in open access publications. During this time, we’ve observed a ten-fold increase in publications (almost 200,000 at 2011) and more than a six-fold increase in the number of open access journals, to almost 5,000.
Things are clearly moving in the right direction, but this impressive number still accounts for only around 20% of all publishing.
Simultaneously, global leaders have acknowledged the ethical dilemmas of our current system and backed open access. The European Union, for example, is currently piloting a project to encourage all EU-funded research to place their results in an open-access repository or publish them in open access journals.
And some nations, including the United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia, are either planning or implementing policies making publication of publicly-funded research in open access journals mandatory.
Research should be about furthering knowledge for all. And there’s no reason why open access publication shouldn’t be routine.
There are also strong economic arguments for investing in a knowledge economy. We are confident that with enough support, we will see more nations, companies and organisations mandating open access publication – a move that’s likely to bring social and economic benefits.
And who knows, maybe we’ll also begin to see the “traditional” academic journals change their business model and one day make knowledge open to all.
Dr Alessandro Demaio is PhD Fellow in Global Health with the Copenhagen School of Global Health at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, he is a Director of the Global Steering Committee for the Young Professional Chronic Disease Network and NCD Action. For The Conversation, Alessandro expresses his own views only. Bertil F. Dorch is currently senior executive adviser to the university librarian at Copenhagen University Library Services (part of The Royal Library, Denmark), and have previously been Head of Center for Research Support Services as well as a research scientist at University of Copenhagen (The Niels Bohr Institute), within the field of astrophysics. Fred Hersch does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
I am pleased to share that, as of last month, the journals published by the Royal College of Nursing (UK) are now available through HINARI, which means that HINARI users can now access the following journals:-
- Cancer Nursing Practice - Emergency Nurse - Learning Disability Practice - Mental Health Practice - Nurse Researcher - Nursing Children and Young People Nursing Management - Nursing Older People - Nursing Standard - Primary Health Care
This brings the total number of nursing journals available via HINARI to 172, including journals from BMJ Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Informa Healthcare, John Wiley, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Mary Ann Liebert, Sage, SLACK, and Thieme.
Holistic approaches to learning are agnostic as to method. Drawing from connectivist and older models, they valorize diversity and the socially distributed cognition afforded by the read-write Web and other publishing models, accepting that every learning experience is unique, and every learner’s needs are different. Connectivist approaches, for all their extensive reliance on networks of people engaging socially, are at heart focused on the individual—specifically, the individual’s learning. Holistic models embrace the fact that it is sometimes more important that a group learns, rather than an individual, especially in collectivist cultures (Potgieter et al., 2006). Holistic models recognize that, sometimes, guidance is what is most needed, that people can learn without direct engagement with others and, even that transmittive instructionist models of teaching have a place. p.61.
