Guide to producing an online training course on The Global Health Network

1. Planning your course

2. Contents

3. Images, Video, and Audio

4. Copyright and Open Access

5. Dissemination

6. Reporting and Stats

1: Planning your course

The first thing to think about when you want to create a course around your subject area is the target audience.

This is an important step and should be done early in the planning process. It will help ensure the course is relevant and it will help authors narrow down on the focus of the training content.

•  Think about who will take your training. 

•  What is their likely profession, level they work at or educational background?

•  Are there any prerequisites for taking this course?

•  Does this course form part of a series?

• If you are creating a modular course, does the order in which modules are taken matter?

• Should it be mandatory to complete a module to access the following module of the course?

2: Contents

The content must be received in a Word or PDF document. Aim for around 3000-5000 words per module.

Define the Learning Objectives of the course:

What should learners know, what skills should they have or what attitude or approach should they have once they have completed your course?

Make sure it connects to the Learning Objectives. Do not stray away from the objective of the course by sharing irrelevant information or information that is too advanced/too easy for your target audience. Use language that is easy to understand and follow.

Quizzes

We use multiple choice questions (MCQs) to test the degree to which learning objectives have been attained. 

• Map quiz questions to Learning Objectives to make sure learners have understood the course as intended. 

• Do not use negative questioning, do not introduce new words that have not been used in the course, avoid double barrelled questions.

• Quiz questions should not try to trick or confuse learners, but help consolidate their learning. For example:

• Providing the reasoning behind each answer is a good way to help learners build their knowledge and understanding.

• Mid-course knowledge checks for modular courses are a good way to keep learners interested and to test they are learning content as they go along.

• Certificates can be provided per module, or one per modular course. With 80% pass grade. The 80% threshold cannot be changed. (See Appendix 1)

Classic and timeless

It is important to future-proof your training content. This ensures that future learners find your training materials meaningful and up-to-date. Maintaining this relevancy is also crucial for sustainability, as reaching out to original authors for updates can be time-consuming. The updating process may temporarily limit learner access until revisions are complete.

Referencing recent case studies or events can enhance your content, but choose wording carefully to prevent it from becoming outdated too quickly. For example: 

Case Studies 

Use local examples – make your content relevant to the area you are in or targeting to show, for example, how certain protocols have worked well.

Proofreading and QA process 

Once we receive the material, we will look at the structure and make relevant changes to make sure it flows well in our Content Management System (CMS). We will not make any changes to the content during this process, as our job is to just work on structure and formatting. We may suggest alternative images, or suggest changes in the quiz questions.  

Peer-review – We highly advise you send out your materials to experts in the field for peer-review before you send it to us. This is for quality assurance and a seal of high quality. We may be able to suggest some peer-reviewers in some cases.

Logos  

Think about which logos you would like to appear on the course content and the certificates. These are usually collaborators. Please provide high resolution images of logos along with the content. The Global Health Network logo appears on every certificate and course page. (See Appendix 2).

Landing page

Every course has a landing page that is the first page of the course. This page should highlight the course specifics, such as background, objectives, target audience, authors, acknowledgments and funder information. You may use the course landing page template to fill in the relevant details (See Appendix 3). The file will be sent to you with the initial package and checklist of items.

Interactive Content  

We have collaborators who have supplied content in genial.ly, that is compatible with our CMS, Django. It provides interactive material and can provide a good knowledge check interaction mid-course.

Translations

The Global Health Network can work with you to translate the course into another language. If you have the resources to translate and review the materials yourself, we welcome this. Alternatively, we can translate using Translators Without Borders (TWB).  

If the course is translated via TWB, it will need to be reviewed by a subject specialist who is a native speaker of that particular language. We highly recommend you organise this at your earliest convenience. We do not recommend having the translation reviewed by someone without knowledge of the subject area.

3: Images, Video and Audio

Images

Please provide all course images in a separate zipped folder. Save images in corresponding folders for each module. This makes locating the images easier for us.

Try to ensure the images are high resolution and original preferably in png format. Other formats are acceptable as long as the image is not blurred or hard to read.

Ensure you have permission to share all images/figures. Using a copyrighted image without permission can result in fines.

Please read here for more information about copyright and acknowledging the creator.  

Please read here for more information about how to check an image’s copyright owner.

Video and Audio

We can host videos/audios of any size via our YouTube channel.

Save videos/audio in files the same way as the images per module. We can accept most video formats supported by YouTube, such as .MP4, .MPG, .WMV. Sharing via OneDrive, Google Drive is recommended.

Audio files can also be used to share content. Please make sure audio files are of high quality, speech is clear, and does not sound muffled.

4: Copyright and Open Access

The Global Health Training Centre is proud to host Open Access courses that are accessible to all for free.  

Training content hosted on TGHN includes the following text as standard on the course landing page:

'These e-learning materials are owned by The Global Health Network. You are free to share or adapt this material but you must attribute it to The Global Health Network using the link www.theglobalhealthnetwork.org.'

This equates to a  licence. Course creators and organisations who choose to share materials on The Global Health Network are welcome to suggest alternative CC licence terms if they wish and the above standard text can be edited accordingly.

For more information about Creative Commons (CC) Licenses please see:

https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ or for help with which license to use, access the Creative Commons license chooser tool.

5: Dissemination

If you have a comms team and would like to collaborate with The Global Health Network comms team, please let us know at your earliest convenience, preferably in the initial meeting.

Our comms team can work with yours to drive communications across social media channels such as X (Formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.  

If you have no comms team, we can still boost the dissemination across Social Media channels and share the course in The Global Health Network monthly newsletter. We ask that you share a short blurb about the course for the newsletter as early as possible if you would like us to drive the dissemination.

6: Reporting and Stats

The Global Health Training Centre can provide periodic stats for the first year for the course. Please discuss any reporting with us in the initial meeting, to work out how we can assist you with this.

Appendices

Download a PDF of this guideline here

Appendix 1 - Sample of course certificate (Click to enlarge)

Appendix 2 - TGHN logo

Appendix 3 - Course landing page template (Click to download)