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AFRO-NETS> Supercourse update - May 2000
Supercourse update - May 2000
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http://www.pitt.edu/~super1
Dear Friends,
We are very pleased to report that the Supercourse is doing quite
well. We have had the opportunity to examine usage from 1/Jan/2000 to
15 May/2000. It was during this time that we crossed the 100-lecture
barrier. We now have sufficient data to begin to evaluate this grand
experiment. It is working.
We are interested in three issues:
1) will people look at the lectures,
2) will global faculty contribute through rating lectures for quality
assurance and
3) what is the perceived quality of the lectures?
1. Lecture usage: Typically we present our best lectures to ca. 40
students a year. Can our lectures in the Supercourse reach more?
There is little question that the Supercourse reaches many more than
we could ever teach. We reviewed the overall number of hits to the
Supercourse. Each month 3,224 hits were recorded; this represents
about 39,000 hits per year. It is very unlikely that any other set of
lectures in epidemiology, global health and the Internet approaches
this level of usage.
For the individual lectures, the results were even more encouraging.
The median number of hits was about 100 per month, which is about
1,200 per year. If this were traditional learning, we would have to
teach 30 years to have the same number.
Obviously this is still rough, however, it is conservative as we are
only examining hits on the server in Pittsburgh. There are 25 mir-
rored servers worldwide; therefore, the number of hits has to be con-
siderably higher.
2. Will the global faculty comment and provide quality assurance?
For the first 90 lectures there were 709 reviews. The median number
of reviews for lectures were 7. This once again must be put into to
context. There is virtually no quality assurance in traditional dis-
tance learning. Moreover, for peer review of journal articles we are
lucky to obtain 2 reviews. For one of the lectures there were an
amazing 70 reviews.
3. What is the perceived quality of the lectures?
The perceived quality is excellent. At the end of each lecture people
judge the lecture on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being poor, 3 being
average, 4 above average and 5 excellent. The lectures were very well
received by our faculty, with the median score being 4.1. Ninety
eight percent of the scores were 3.0 or above. No lecture was rated
as poor. Close to 1/4 of the lectures were 4.5 or greater.
It is important to point out that these ratings were before the fac-
ulty member had the opportunity to change their lectures in response
to the comments. Most certainly after the changes the lectures would
be rated much higher.
We are very encouraged by the results, and the global participation.
We now have the data to show that many, many people worldwide will
come to see the lectures. Our global teaching faculty provide impor-
tant comments for improvement of lectures. Moreover, the lectures are
rated as being well above average.
This summer we plan to write several lectures on the approaches for
quality control as well as global usage. Let us know if you would
like to review and comment upon these.
Thank you very much, our friends.
Ron, Deb, Akira, Beatriz, Benjamin, Eun Ryoung, Eugene, Tom
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
Tel: +1-412-383-2746 (Work Phone)
+1-724-934-9023 (Home Phone)
mailto:[email protected]
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