Massive open online courses: a resource for health education in developing countries

Developing countries are suffering from increasing burdens presented by both non-communicable and emerging infectious diseases. Health education is an important step to fight against these mostly preventable diseases. E-learning has been shown to be one of the tools that address some of the training...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global health promotion 2018-09, Vol.25 (3), p.74-76
Main Authors: Liyanagunawardena, Tharindu R., Aboshady, Omar A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Information
Course Content
Developing Countries
Distance learning
Education, Distance - methods
Educational Needs
Health education
Health Education - methods
Health Personnel - education
Humans
Infectious diseases
Internet
Internet access
Language Tests
LDCs
Medical personnel
Online Courses
Online instruction
Public health
Suffering
Teaching Methods
Training needs
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Summary:Developing countries are suffering from increasing burdens presented by both non-communicable and emerging infectious diseases. Health education is an important step to fight against these mostly preventable diseases. E-learning has been shown to be one of the tools that address some of the training challenges experienced in developing countries by supporting efficient content delivery, decreasing costs and increasing access. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a recent innovative presentation of online learning that have attracted millions of learners from all over the world. In this commentary, we propose MOOCs as a potential tool to offer a tremendous opportunity to fulfil the unmet training needs of the health sector in developing countries in two complementary ways: as a resource for training healthcare professionals; and as a resource for the general public. Potential barriers to accessing MOOCs and possible solutions are also discussed.
ISSN:1757-9759
1757-9767
DOI:10.1177/1757975916680970