Hi Peggy 
Re your request; 
 The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory is developing 
a Career Masters in Public Health to be delivered primarily 
on-line beginning in the fall of 1999. ....... 

> How do you feel about the on-campus requirement?
> How do you feel about the minimum 5 year field experience requirement?
> Do you feel the curriculum meets the needs of the field?
> What do you think of on-line degrees?
>  
I'm not sure that these are the right questions in terms of 
trying to gauge whether this course will meet the 
educational requirements of post graduate students in 
public health. 

It is often assumed that distance learning courses are 
inferior to those that offer full contact.  Like everything 
else there are good and bad distance learning courses and 
it is impossible to assess quality of these courses by the 
amount of contact time. With distance learning there are 
different questions to be asked in order to assess the 
ability of the course to meet the learning objective of the 
students. 

The main issues are about 
1) rationale for choosing this mode and accurate assessment 
of market demand.i.e its important  to know the needs of 
the field before you embark on the course devlopment. 

2)  Whether quality assurance systems are in place during 
both development of the course (e.g piloting of materials) 
and after the course has begun  ( e.g external assessors 
who have a expertise in educational methods).

3) Quality of learning materials; which is dependent on; 
having enough resources to free up  time for writers to 
produce materials ( usually seriously underestimated)  
and writers receiving specific  training in the production 
of distance learning materials.
4) Having efficient and effective methods of student 
support in place, - happy hours by telephone, email 
contact, fax contact etc. 
3) Having excellent administrative support, - a much bigger 
issue witth distance learning

Specific issues that you mention

 On campus requirements 
Depends on how you to choose to capitalise on contact time 
with students and how this relates to distance learning 
materials. 

Field experience 
It is  important in the initial assessment to assess core 
skills required to enable students to meet the learning 
objectives. Years of experience alone is a rather an ad hoc 
measure of  whether students have the requisite skills 
to meet the needs of a distance learning P/G public health 
related degree.

We have been through this process in Liverpool as you may 
guess. There is very little literature to guide you on 
these issues. You might want to look at Phil Race's work on 
open learning. Not specific to public health , but very 
useful all the same. At present there are only a handful of 
public health  courses that are choosng this option, but 
with modularisation, rationalisation etc it is destined 
to become more and more sexy. In addition, this kind 
of flexible learning is particularly atractive to students 
who for many reasons cannot give up employment or are not 
geographically mobile. Development is costly in terms of 
both time and financial resources but the rewards are 
definately worth the trouble. The best bet for a successful 
outcome is to ensure that a very thorough and well thought 
out course development plan is in place at the earliest 
stage. 
I would be happy to have discuss any of this in more detail 
 with you ( or anyone else doing the same).
Any interested parties at the  ASPHER  meeting next week in 
Torino, Italy ? 
If so perhaps we could meet up.
Best wishes 
debbi
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debbi Stanistreet 
Lecturer in Public Health
MPH Course Co-ordinator
Department of Public Health 
Whelan Building 
Quadrangle 
Liverpool L69 3GB 
United Kingdom

Tel. 00 +44 151 794 5583
Fax. 00 +44 151 794 5588



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