Su-I Hou [Champion of Open – Health Management and Informatics]

Describe your open educational resources and/or practices:

I have incorporated open educational resources in three courses: (1) HSC3593 HIV/AIDS; (2) PAF7868 Mixed-Methods Research, and (3) PAF725 Policy and Program Evaluation.

HSC3593 HIV/AIDS

Because of the rapidly changing development on HIV/AIDS epidemics, prevention and treatment, I have used various government official resources and credible academic and professional websites to provide updated trends, statistics, news, and information to educate my students about various issues critical to HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, and treatment. All the resources are freely available online from credible sites with most updated information. Since 2019, I’ve worked with Jim Paradiso to turn my Webcourses@UCF pages into UCF Pressbooks. This has increased the consistency in the layout and organization of my online course content. We have also recently worked together to update the various HIV prevention stories to help students better understand how HIV might affect one’s life.

 PAF7868 Mixed Methods Research & PAF7325 Policy and Program Evaluation

I’ve incorporated various theory-to-practice learning opportunities, and case studies in these courses, for my doctoral students to equip their application skills. I’ve used a series of my published articles from a multi-phased comprehensive Chinese cancer screening program I conducted, as one of the case studies, to illustrate the various phases of designing and conducting rigorous mixed methods evaluation study. Recently, I’ve worked with Jim to compile these peer-reviewed journal articles as an edited book and hosted it on UCF Pressbooks site. Instead of uploading various articles to my online course, I now have a cohesive pressbooks with consistent layout on this important line of research program for students to access the comprehensive research process details from beginning to the end.

Describe the impact open educational resources and/or practices has had on your teaching and/or students’ learning: 

Students in the HSC3593 course love these free and credible and updated resources without having to buy any textbooks. Students also appreciate the HIV prevention stories to help them relate and develop empathy to those affected by HIV/AIDS. Students in PAF7868 and PAF7325 have enjoyed learning real-life mixed methods evaluation programs and see how frameworks and concepts learned in the classroom applied to communities. I can easily share this edited book resource with colleagues at national and international professional meetings. This is a perfect way to integrate graduate teaching while also promoting research dissemination and increase visibility of UCF.

What is one piece of advice for other faculty interested in OER/P?

It is worth the effort to identify and organize relevant open educational resources and provide students updated and relevant information as course materials for free. In addition to open textbooks, UCF Pressbooks is a wonderful venue to consider if you are interested in creating own educational materials and make them open and free.

Related Resources 

• HIV Prevention Essentials by Su-I Hou (private; freely available to students enrolled in HSC3593)
• Mixed-Methods Evaluation: A Chinese Women Cancer Screening Program by Su-I Hou: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/mmrccsp/