Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Over a period of five years, learning groups composed of fifteen participants and three mentors have traveled along the route of the cold chain in Turkey. Public and private institutions hosted the learners and allowed them to experience the real life of the cold chain (the video Nothing Stands Still can be viewed at Vimeo). This experiential learning method enabled participants to visit, critically observe, discuss and report on the various components of the cold chain process, so they could gain experience and sharpen their skills on handling, storage and distribution of temperature-sensitive products throughout the length of the distribution supply chain system. An emphasis was placed on team members working together to learn from one another and on several global expert mentors who were available to guide the learning, share their experiences, and respond to questions.
The WHO-PDA Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Management on Wheels course has proven a notably intense and successful if not unique learning experience. However, a week-long course required an enormous amount of planning and resources – the reason why it has been possible to arrange only one such course a year. With the demand growing, we have been challenged to find ways to provide a similar learning experience for the cold chain practitioners around the world. With the goal of increasing access to efficient learning opportunities, the course design team was put together in late 2010. Besides providing important and useful content, the design team was committed to create a unique technology-supported learning experience where people could learn with and from each other and where real-life situations and study cases could be used to develop expertise. The team included all aspects of "authentic learning" where the learners could address real, ill-defined problems and create solutions that would be of a real public health benefit. The design of the course emphasizes authentic tasks (Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver, 2010) and collaborative group work (Johnson & Johnson, 2009; Roberts, 2004).
The e-Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Management course is the result of the work of the talented and dedicated design team, including instructional designers, illustrators, filmmakers, software engineers, programmers, content experts, and formative evaluators who spent literally thousands of hours on this project. Their motivation was driven by an aspiration to create a high-quality learning programme that will help to assure using time-temperature sensitive products that are safe, pure, and effective. The platform EPELA (Extensio et Progressio: Authentic e-Learning) provides all the necessary tools to participants. EPELA e-learning promotes collaborative learning which is now well recognized as the vital aspects of effective learning and professional development. EPELA e-learning enhances quality and outcomes of the courses offered. As good as the other courses are, EPELA e-learning provides unique affordances for supporting learning that even best traditional face-to-face courses cannot match.
The course takes participants inside an enhanced, robust mental model of a pharmaceutical cold chain. For 11 weeks, we travel with participants virtually from one location to another, through different levels of the supply chain. In addition to the virtual visits to facilities, we offer short illustrated videos and critical reference materials. Authentic tasks are arranged mainly as group activities to promote collaborative learning and enhanced with peer-review. The course site offers participants tools to help to easily connect with other participants, discuss and produce as a team. Mentors provide timely feedback to all participants whenever necessary and are always ready to assist them whenever participants need them. Following seven weeks of virtual visits to facilities, participants are introduced as a group to a real client so that together with their peers they could analyze, report and give recommendations to the client regarding the client's operation of the time and temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products. Although developed to support the authentic context of the e-Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Management course, all short video-lectures and limited number of documents are made publicly available (more documents are available for course participants as well as facility tour videos, 360 degree spherical and cylindrical photography of the facilities and authentic task videos).
The course opens a new path to an efficient time-and-resource management of learning initiatives and therefore provides an efficient learning access to broad audiences worldwide.
Dr Kartoğlu is a scientist at the World Health Organization, Department of Essential Medicines and Health Products, Quality, Safety and Standards team. He is responsible for learning programmes and coordinates the work of Global Learning Opportunities for Vaccine Quality (GLO/VQ. Prior to his WHO work, Dr Kartoğlu worked with UNICEF as health officer in Central Asian Republics and Kazakhstan Area Office and as health coordinator for Operation Lifeline Sudan based in Kenya. Earlier he was Associate Professor in Public Health at the Institute of Pediatrics of Istanbul University and also held positions as permanent advisor in Public Health to the Ministry of Health in Turkey, and worked in different positions in rural health delivery system for 10 years. He is the founder of the Human Rights Branch of the Turkish Medical Association and WEBCOM (Communication Web for Health). He was elected to serve in the Executive Council of the Turkish Medical Association for a term in 1988. Since 1974 he professionally draws cartoons, published his works in books and postcards, and received 10 international/national cartoon awards. Dr Kartoğlu has over 50 professional publications in public health including 11 books/manuals targeting primary health care professionals used as learning materials, and received two international research awards in research design and communication. Dr Kartoğlu also received (International Quality & Productivity Center) IQPC Cool Chain Excellence Award in 2010 and Ludwig Rajchman 2011 Science Award. Ümit was recently named one of the "Temperature Controlled Logistics Leaders for 2012" by the IQPC's Temperature Control Logistics & Quality Network, an international industry peer group recognizing 15 of the most influential and inspiring thought leaders in global pharmaceutical supply chain. Dr Kartoğlu has over 25 years of experience in learning, and has developed various creative learning tools, materials and authentic e-learning courses.
