User:Michael rowe
Basics
Short description: Most academic textbooks are published in America or Europe, which brings with it several problems, not least of which is high cost, lack of contextual relevance and outdated evidence
Audience: South African physiotherapy clinicians, educators and students.
Goals:
- Create a framework for the development of a South African physiotherapy textbook
- Make use of local examples, case studies, etc.
- Emphasise the unique health-related problems in South Africa
- Establish a platform for discussion and debate among healthcare professionals
How does it work?: Summary of the design.
Similar projects: Write about similar projects or initiatives, how your project can learn from them and extend what the have done - or how you could collaborate. Know what others are doing!
- Connexions: I started a module on ankle rehabilitation on Connexions but didn't enjoy the interface. I didn't feel it was intuitive and simple enough to work on freely, and definitely not collaboratively.
- Wikiversity
- Wikibooks: I started a book on assessment a few years ago, which has been added to by a few others since then. I haven't put any work into it since I began it because I felt (at the time) that there was no-one else working in this space. Also, it's an international project, so not really relevant for this particular one.
Open Technology
Uncertain about the best tool for collaborative authoring. Wikis (e.g. Mediawiki) clearly have the upper hand with the "collaboration" part, but aren't great for authoring/ formatting. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to use a wiki for creating content and then exporting the content to another platform to manage the editing?
A blogging environment would be useful to syndicate the progress of the project, and Twitter (or maybe a more secluded platform like laconica, seeing that Twitter is now mainstream) for pushing out relevant content. I'm thinking multiple streams of content e.g. having different blogs/microblogs for clinical content (and maybe even split that again into different subject areas), educational content, writing guidelines, etc. Contributors can then subscribe to the content areas that they specialise in.
The fact that it's online should make use of that fact e.g. the "book" could have an IRC channel, Twitter stream, blog, etc.
Open Content / Licensing
What types of content are you using or producing, and how are they licensed. Do you need to clear copyright for any of them? Are there institutional policies that affect what you can (or cannot) do?
I'll push to use a Creative Commons license but ultimately it might depend on the wishes of the profession as a whole (I'm hoping it will be a national project). The use of open content studies for background evidence will also be encouraged.
The "textbook" will also make use of free online resources to further inform their learning.
Open Pedagogy
How do participants learn? What forms of assessment are you using?
Each section / chapter will incorporate various ongoing assessment tools (e.g. self-study questions, personal reflection).