Dr. Karimou Sani, former USAID-HCI Advisor Tahoua, Niger; Dr Ekoye Saidou, Director General MOH Niger; Mr. Sabou Djibrina, UASID – HCI Niger; and Lauren Crigler, USAID HCI Bethesda, USA contributed to this blog post.

Faced by a severe shortage of health care professionals throughout Niger, the country’s Ministry of Public Health requested assistance from USAID’s Health Care Improvement Project (HCI) in 2009 to implement a program to address the health workforce crisis within the country.  In response, my team and I recognized this has an exceptional opportunity to implement a program to improve the management of human resources in selected facilities and management offices within the Tahoua Region.

As a part of the collaborative approach we adopted, quality improvement (QI) teams tested and implemented changes within their own facilities, while simultaneously monitoring performance with QI advisors and coaches from both HCI and the Ministry of Public Health. 

Applying quality improvement methods to HR performance management

As Quality Improvement Advisors, we recognized the importance of supporting the facility teams in strengthening their ability to recognize where they needed to improve their performance and helping them to have confidence in managing the quality of that service within their team. In order to address areas that were in need of improvement, we determined the variables that were adversely impacting health worker performance, engagement, and productivity.  The steps we undertook to address these areas are displayed in the diagram to the right. We began by aligning and clarifying tasks, and we measured progress in performance by tracking clinical indicators. 

Originally posted on the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative blog.

On April 16^th, 2013, the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative (GHKC) will host the Global Health Knowledge Management Share Fair: Opportunities and Challenges in Washington, DC.

A few months ago I received a Google Alert about the West Africa E-Leaning Conference and Exhibition (WAeLCE) to be held at the University of Lagos on March 27-28. Yesterday, I received another alert about the conference, this time an article from the Guardian Nigeria.  In Addressing Challenges of Nigeria’s e-Learning Initiatives, Adeyeni Adepetuni discussed the role information communication technology (ICT) and eLearning plays in Nigeria.

Today’s educational world depends on ICT; there are opportunities for close co-operation with colleagues in the same or even other fields though networking and internet services; educators are challenged to new methods of acquiring knowledge through knowledge sharing and are ultimately connected to the world.

West Africa E-Leaning Conference and Exhibition (WAeLCE)

The context to this challenge can be summarized by the state of supply versus demand as described in the conference press release: “only 28% out of 1.5 million prospective applicants gained admission into Nigerian universities in 2012.” As a result, ICT is critical in addressing unmet demand and has the potential to revolutionize the field of education.

I found Adepetuni’s comments on the need for new educational standards relevant to our project; the K4Health/Nigeria Web-Based Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Program for Medical Laboratory Scientists.

When developing eLearning courses, course authors (I’m including myself here) often struggle with developing quiz questions and wait until the very end of the course development process to start thinking about what questions to ask. Often, we look at questions solely for assessment purposes, which is a crucial role that questions play, but a limited view.

Before we talk about the other roles that questions play, let’s take a closer look at how to develop good assessment questions. The primary purpose of assessment questions is to measure whether or not learning has taken place. Some strategies that you can take in developing good assessment questions include:

• Review the detailed learning objectives when you write your quiz questions. Because those objectives state what the learner should learn by the end of the training, they serve as a good base for both fine-tuning the content you will cover and the knowledge acquisition to be measured.
• Link the questions directly to the performance you spell out in the detailed learning objectives.
• Plan on writing a sufficient bank of questions that can be drawn upon for their multiple uses so that key concepts are reinforced throughout the learning process. 

These tips apply to eLearning courses, other types of virtual trainings, and face-to-face trainings.