Overseas students in the UK: Who benefits?

• ...students from the top 10 non-European Union countries account for more than twice the number of students from the top 10 EU countries, with 239,210 studying in a British university in the past academic year.  
• International student expenditure generates £2.4billion across the economy and more than 21,900 jobs 
• Students in Higher Education Institutions 2006-07 (Higher Education Statistics Agency)

Universities that rely on large intake from one country are vulnerable, senior figure warns. John Gill, Times Higher Education January 2008

• …University's pro vice- chancellor for enterprise, said: "Universities are more aggressive in recruiting international students, but some are taking fairly high risks ...”  

• "China and India are the two big ones, but Nigeria is becoming very large business….”

  Can we aim at capacity-building rather than boosting UK interests? 
  

• Increasing amounts of open source educational material, as well as delivery mechanisms, are freely available through the Internet, but universities which offer open access to their materials do not offer teaching or assessment in association 

• For capacity building in low-to middle-income countries, how about trying to make open source materials available, guide students through them and assess achieved competences? 

• And do this outside the traditional university system? 

• This is the idea underpinning the ‘Peoples Open Access Education Initiative’ – Peoples-uni

• How can the Faculty of Public Health help?
   

  The IT Open Source revolution 
  

• Open Source: software code created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community
• Open Educational Resources: teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. 
• Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything: 
  ~  'weapons of mass collaboration' 
  ~  4 principles: openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.
  

  
  

  Pilot of course module

• A pilot of a course module on Maternal Mortality ran October -December 2007
• Moodle platform, 10 weeks, five topics: – magnitude of the health problem – implementation of improved data collection and accuracy – relationship of personal and environmental factors to cause – potential evidence-based solutions to reduce the burden of illness – policy-based solutions that can be implemented
• Three assessments (one formative),
• General and content expert facilitators
• 38 students from 8 countries after limited publicity, range from clinicians wanting Public Health perspective to policy -makers and programme leads
• 22 students participated actively in discussions and/or submitted assignments 
• 19 returned evaluation survey questionnaires

                                             Definitely  Probably
  

  
  

  Progress to date 

• More than 80 people from 24 different countries have agreed to take part in course module development
• 12 course modules being developed: - Foundation Sciences of Public Health - Public Health problems
• Royal Society for Public Health will offer graduate certificates and diplomas 
• Partnerships and collaborations being developed

  Peoples-uni and the Faculty of Public Health
  
  

• International and Education Committees have given full support and Directors of Training will recognise Trainees’ experience towards meeting learning outcomes
• A number of Trainees and Fellows are already involved in course development
• We need:
  - Course module developers
  - On-line facilitators
  - Trainees and supervisors

The WIIFM test

• Work with a diverse and interesting group of colleagues from many countries
• Keep up to date with advances in international Public Health issues as well as developments in information and educational technology
• Cover Faculty learning outcomes
• Get up to speed with the open source approach 
  - a new way for individuals and organisations to develop collaboratively and share the products of their work

  Finally 

• All collaboration is welcome. Please join in or make suggestions.
• http://peoples-uni.org
• dick.heller@manchester.ac.uk