| Supercourse Overview |
December 8/2004
Q:
What is the best means to improve public health teach and research?
A: Improve the lectures.
Q: How do we improve higher education lectures?
A: Have academic faculty world-wide share their lectures.
Q: Will faculty share lectures?
A: Yes, the Supercourse has 18,000 faculty from 151 countries who created a Library of
Lectures with more than 2000 lectures on the Internet with quality control, and cutting edge cognitive
design. This is being shared world wide.
The Supercourse
consists
of:
1. Information Sharing & Open Source Model: A Global academic
faculty is developing and beginning to share their best, most passionate lectures in the
area of public health and the Internet. This benefits all. The experienced faculty member
can beef up their lectures that are not cutting edge. New instructors reduce preparation
time and improve their lectures, as they can employ state of the art lectures from others.
Faculty in developing countries have access to current scientific information which they
would not normally have. The concept of a library of lectures for all to use is in
many ways similar to that of "freeware"
or "open source software" on the computer.
2. Global Health Network: We are developing a global
Supercourse with 18,000 faculty, called the
Global
Health Network (GHNet), already in 151 countries. They are mainly
faculty members (e.g. Deans, Chair persons, Professors, Associate or
Assistant Professors) at academia. They are the lecturers,
reviewers, or translators of the Supercourse
lectures.
They are also the major user group of the Supercourse. You are most welcome
to GHNet (e.g. how to join and how to
provide a lecture)
3. Teaching the Teachers:
Supercourse is not a substitute for existing educational model but a
teaching-support system. We provide
high level lectures to the teachers of students in medical, dental, nursing
schools, and those of public health etc. These are
passionate lectures by experts in the field, and the teacher just "takes" them
out like a library book to teach. The Supercourse is not just a distance
education model in two reasons: The first is that despite our effort being global, there is a
"death to distance" as the Economist has quoted. This means that if a student is
in the next room, or in the next continent, it makes no difference. In addition, distance
education means a separation between the teacher and the student. Here we have no
separation in that the classroom teacher are doing the teaching, but they will have much
better educational lectures than they ever had before.
4. Statistical Quality Assurance: Supercourse lectures are provided basically by faculty in academia. Besides, we have an open peer-review system (example) on the lectures by the global faculty to strengthen the quality of lectures. In addition, all students rate the lectures, and we will track the ratings over time using systems developed by Deming for Industry (Statistical Quality Control).
5. Supercourse Mirroring & CD-Rom Distribution: To enhance lecture dissemination, we set up Supercourse mirror sites and distribute Supercourse CD-Rom around the world with free of charge. We have set up 43 mirrored servers (i.e. simply a copy of the Supercourse website) in medical, dental, veterinary, nursing, and public health schools. This effort is mainly to improve local access to the Supercourse lectures. Since December 2000, we have created the Supercourse CD. It is a CD-Rom which includes all current Supercourse lectures. More than 20000 CDs have been distributed to faculty in 118 countries. The latest edition of the CD contains over 1000 Epidemiology lectures.
6. Presentation Speed: We have developed approaches to speed access (e.g. developing small size files for graphics: less than 10 kb size image files). This effort is for the users from developing countries who have low-bandwidth Internet connection.7. Hypertext Comic Book: The lectures are web-based icon-driven format mainly with graphic presentation and text. The students can go deep for more information through hyperlinks. Example.
8. Multilingual: For global use, this must be multilingual, the first lecture is in 8 languages. There are 34 multilingual lectures.
9. Online Textbooks: The Global Health Network - Supercourse asked the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to put two textbooks. The BMJ uploaded its bestsellers on the web for the Supercourse; Statistics at Square One and Epidemiology for the Uninitiated
10. Publication: We have published over 115 papers in leading medical journals including the Lancet, British Medical Journal, Nature Medicine among others.
Full-text article which described the philosophy of the Supercourse: "The Internet is THE Information Superhighway" by John Patrick (VP, IBM)
Current Status:
We have 2000 lectures online. We have beta tested the lectures in two courses in Japan, and one in South Africa, the course worked very well, with considerable interest. In addition, for our best lectures in the classroom setting only 50 students per year have a chance to see them. Initial results indicate that 2500 individuals per year are accessing the lectures or about 50 times that of what we do in the classroom. In full operation there will be over 30,000 hits per year, which would mean we would have to teach 600 years to achieve as great a coverage as the Supercourse.
In addition to these we have currently underdevelopment: Mass customization system with which Supercourse users can search, select, and customize their own lectures material using the Supercourse lectures or presentation slides. We expect this system will bring the maximum flexibility of utilization for their teaching. Deming's Statistical Quality Control system is also under re-modeling phase. We are about to analyze the data from peer-review for the last a few years.
All participating authors acknowledge that the information contained in their submissions is accurate when submitted, their lecture will be shareware to be used and shared by others. Lectures appearing on the Supercourse site may contain the opinions of the submitting authors which are not to be construed as the opinions, policies or positions of the website developer the website provider.
The opinions expressed in the lecture are those of the authors and not necessarily those of their institutions.
All Supercourse lectures cannot be privatized or sold.
Contact Persons:
Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
Director
Disease Monitoring and Telecommunications
WHO Collaborating Center
Professor of Epidemiology
Graduate School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15261 USA
Ronlaporte@aol.com
Akira Sekikawa, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
akira@pitt.edu
Deborah J. Aaron, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Education
debaaron@pitt.edu