The potential of an online educational platform to contribute to achieving sustainable development goals: a mixed-methods evaluation of the Peoples-uni online platform

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Abstract

Background

This paper reports on an online platform, People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni), as a means of enhancing access to master’s level public health education for health professionals. Peoples-uni seeks to improve population health in low- and middle-income countries by building public health capacity through e-learning at very low cost. We report here an evaluation of the Peoples-uni programme, conducted within the context of Sustainable Development Goal 4, which seeks to “ ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning” by 2030.

The evaluation seeks to address the following three questions: (1) Did Peoples-uni meet its intended goals? (2) What were the different types of impacts that students experienced? (3) What suggestions for future changes in Peoples-uni did students recommend?

Methods

A mixed methods evaluation consisted of two parts, namely an online survey and a telephone interview. A total of 119 master’s level graduates were invited to participate; responses were obtained from 71 of those invited, giving a response rate of 60%. Respondents were spread across 31 countries. Interviews were conducted with 18 respondents.

Results

There was strong evidence that Peoples-uni had achieved its stated goals. Potential impacts on students included knowledge to enhance practice and appreciation of context, enhanced research capacity through knowledge of public health, critical thinking and evidence-based programming, and empowerment of students about the potential of education as a means of improving their lives. Accreditation through future partnerships with local universities was recommended by students.

Conclusions

Peoples-uni has been able to deliver a credible public health master’s level educational programme, with positive impacts on the students who graduated. Challenges are to find a way to accredit the programme to ensure its sustainability and to see how to take full advantage of the current, and future, graduates to turn this from an education programme into a capacity-building programme with real impact.

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Most cited references 16

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Mapping Africa's advanced public health education capacity: the AfriHealth project.

Nazarius M Tumwesigye, S Duale, D Serwadda … (2007)

Literature on human resources for health in Africa has focused on personal health services. Little is known about graduate public health education. This paper maps "advanced" public health education in Africa. Public health includes all professionals needed to manage and optimize health systems and the public's health. Data were collected through questionnaires and personal visits to departments, institutes and schools of community medicine or public health. Simple descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. For more than 900 million people, there are fewer than 500 full-time staff, around two-thirds of whom are male. More men (89%) than women (72%) hold senior degrees. Over half (55%) of countries do not have any postgraduate public health programme. This shortage is most severe in lusophone and francophone Africa. The units offering public health programmes are small: 81% have less than 20 staff, and 62% less than 10. On the other hand, over 80% of Africans live in countries where at least one programme is available, and there are six larger schools with over 25 staff. Programmes are often narrowly focused on medical professionals, but "open" programmes are increasing in number. Public health education and research are not linked. Africa urgently needs a plan for developing its public health education capacity. Lack of critical mass seems a key gap to be addressed by strengthening subregional centres, each of which should provide programmes to surrounding countries. Research linked to public health education and to educational institutions needs to increase.

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Building capacity without disrupting health services: public health education for Africa through distance learning

Lucy Alexander, Ehi Uche Igumbor, David Sanders … (2009)

The human resources crisis in Africa is especially acute in the public health field. Through distance education, the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, has provided access to master's level public health education for health professionals from more than 20 African countries while they remain in post. Since 2000, interest has increased overwhelmingly to a point where four times more applications are received than can be accommodated. This home-grown programme remains sensitive to the needs of the target learners while engaging them in high-quality learning applied in their own work contexts. This brief paper describes the innovative aspects of the programme, offering some evaluative indications of its impact, and reviews how the delivery of text-led distance learning has facilitated the realization of the objectives of public health training. Strategies are proposed for scaling up such a programme to meet the growing need in this essential area of health human resource capacity development in Africa.

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A systematic review of outcome and impact of Master’s in health and health care

Prisca AC Zwanikken, Marjolein Dieleman, Dulani Samaranayake … (2013)

Background The ‘human resources for health’ crisis has highlighted the need for more health (care) professionals and led to an increased interest in health professional education, including master’s degree programmes. The number of these programmes in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is increasing, but questions have been raised regarding their relevance, outcome and impact. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate the outcomes and impact of health-related master’s degree programmes. Methods We searched the databases Scopus, Pubmed, Embase, CINAHL, ERIC, Psychinfo and Cochrane (1999 - November 2011) and selected websites. All papers describing outcomes and impact of health-related Master programmes were included. Three reviewers, two for each article, extracted data independently. The articles were categorised by type of programme, country, defined outcomes and impact, study methods used and level of evidence, and classified according to outcomes: competencies used in practice, graduates’ career progression and impact on graduates’ workplaces and sector/society. Results Of the 33 articles included in the review, most originated from the US and the UK, and only one from a low-income country. The programmes studied were in public health (8), nursing (8), physiotherapy (5), family practice (4) and other topics (8). Outcomes were defined in less than one third of the articles, and impact was not defined at all. Outcomes and impact were measured by self-reported alumni surveys and qualitative methods. Most articles reported that competencies learned during the programme were applied in the workplace and alumni reported career progression or specific job changes. Some articles reported difficulties in using newly gained competencies in the workplace. There was limited evidence of impact on the workplace. Only two articles reported impact on the sector. Most studies described learning approaches, but very few described a mechanism to ensure outcome and impact of the programme. Conclusions Evidence suggests that graduates apply newly learned competencies in the field and that they progress in their career. There is a paucity of well-designed studies assessing the outcomes and impact of health-related master’s degree programmes in low- and middle-income countries. Studies of such programmes should consider the context and define outcomes and impact.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Sanjeev Sridharan: sanjeevsridharan@msn.com

Madeleine Bondy: maddybondy@gmail.com

April Nakaima: aprilnakaima@gmail.com

Richard F. Heller:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3161-5967

rfheller@peoples-uni.org

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Health Res Policy Syst

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Health Res Policy Syst

Title: Health Research Policy and Systems

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1478-4505

Publication date (Electronic): 12 November 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 12 November 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 16

Electronic Location Identifier: 106

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.415502.7, The Evaluation Centre for Complex Health Interventions, , St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto, ; Toronto, Canada

[2 ]People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni), Manchester, United Kingdom

Author information

Richard F. Heller http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3161-5967

Article

Publisher ID: 381

DOI: 10.1186/s12961-018-0381-2

PMC ID: 6233379

PubMed ID: 30419943

SO-VID: 2c22aa26-3a9d-4bcc-955f-df7a24e17c4c

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

History

Date received : 9 May 2018

Date accepted : 10 October 2018

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: online education,sustainable development goals,evaluation

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: online education, sustainable development goals, evaluation

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The potential of an online educational platform to contribute to achieving sustainable development goals: a mixed-methods evaluation of the Peoples-uni online platform

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

Most cited references 16

Mapping Africa's advanced public health education capacity: the AfriHealth project.

Building capacity without disrupting health services: public health education for Africa through distance learning

A systematic review of outcome and impact of Master’s in health and health care

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Cited by 5

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