This time last year, the OpenMRS Academy Squad was preparing to pilot the OpenMRS Fundamentals Academy in Mozambique. Reaching that goal was so inspiring that the Academy Squad started to talk about a new goal for 2021: another academy, this time for developers or implementers.
The challenge? The Academy Squad needed a few more implementers who could take the lead on designing and developing the course.
The opportunities?
-
From various webinars to community meeting sessions to the fantastic work @bistenes has done on Frontend Developer Guide, we already have a lot of content that could be turned into some kind of a dev fundamentals course.
-
A group of implementing organizations, including PATH, UW/I-TECH - DIGI, UCSF, and Jembi, began working together to on a series of courses that would build the capacity of digital health leaders from ministries of health, organizations, program managers, IT support staff, developers, and everyone else involved in developing and deploying information systems - including OpenMRS. Some of what they were talking about sounded a lot like what we had our OpenMRS Academy Concept Note.
The solution?
During our Academy Squad meeting time this summer, @christine and I began working with @grace, Peninah and @eudson of UCSF, Linda Taylor and @zanedickens of Jembi, Carli Rogosin and @janflowers from UW/I-TECH-DIGI to draw from our content and create a virtual OpenMRS 3.0 | OHRI Fundamentals Bootcamp for developers who want to expand their knowledge about the technologies used by our 3.0 Framework and the OHRI package. Since it doesn’t yet ask anyone to code or configure, it could be a good way for people to prepare for a more hands-on hackathon - maybe during OMRS21?
What’s next and how can you get involved?
We think we have the makings of a virtual bootcamp or short course that covers at least the basics that developers and technical leaders should know about the 3.0 Framework. We’ve set it up so that each week, participants can work through materials for 1-2 sessions on their own, attend a live discussion/Q&A session, then take a quiz. There are 7-8 sessions, so the virtual bootcamp would run for 7-8 weeks.
In September/October, we’d like to have a small group of people (10 or so) go through the course materials as if they were actual participants and give us feedback. Do we really cover the basics? Is there anything we should take out? What is important to add? How can we make the content more engaging?
Want to be a part of our “participant” focus group? Register here.
When?
Join us for an overview session on Tuesday, 7 September. We’ll go through what this bootcamp is all about, how it fits in with future, more practical bootcamps/hackathons, the schedule for September/October, and how access the materials, go through them, participate in discussions, and take the quiz.
Tuesday, September 7 at 7:30pm IST | 5pm Nairobi | 4pm Cape Town | 2pm UTC | 10am Boston | 7am Seattle
Where? Zoom
