How do students study from PEOI? There are many ways..

With the diverse ways a teacher can ask his/her students to use PEOI professional course content:

– as a most complete textbook for in-class lecturing with its continuously updated text and its links to relevant sites

– as a study guide with review questions, exercises and assignments for putting concepts to practice

– as an analytical and research vehicle with cases, bibliography and on-line research assignments for expanding beyond standard course material

– as a assessment and motivational tool with periodic quizzes and tests for progress evaluation

– as a permanent record and proof of knowledge acquisition that can be verified by any university or potential employer

Naturally, review course have more limited purpose than professional courses.

The diversity of teaching methods allows professors to design the studying work load of each student according to his/her preferences, skills, time availability and other constraints. This is done by modifying the grade composition. Although learning can be individualized, the overall grade is primarily based on an in-person final test of consistent (but not identical) content, assuring adequate level of knowledge.

PEOI courses are conceived to serve students who are essentially autonomous, but the presence of work completed data is most appropriate for providing faculty guidance for those students who need it. Even teachers of in-class courses will find PEOI course content motivating learning and most cost effective for their students.

EXPERIENCE: Stories of Online volunteers

Professional Education Organization International (PEOI) delivers online university level courses free of charge to over 6,100 registered students from 196 countries. All activities are managed by around 3,800 online volunteers from 142 countries. PEOI’s volunteers have created complete online university level textbooks, developed assignments, reading lists, cases or lab projects, class discussions, as well as review and test questions. Some courses contain additions from illustrators and/or audio specialists, and from IT specialists who devise stylesheets, write programming scripts, or debug php, html or xml code. A large number of translators work on making the courses available in PEOI’s ten operating languages. PEOI currently has about a dozen courses completed, and a few hundred under construction.

PEOI’s founder John Petroff, a retired professor of finance and economics, asks volunteers to register on the PEOI website to access the course development tools. PEOI places great value on volunteer management and disseminates a monthly newsletter to keep its volunteers abreast of the latest developments, new volunteers, highlights and other issues of interest. Registration also facilitates group interaction and team spirit within each one of PEOI’s disciplines, helping volunteers to exchange ideas on how to develop the courses in their respective disciplines.

“At each step, control of quality is imperative to make sure that the end product is truly a university level course. While it would be desirable that all PEOI’s volunteers are university professors, it is also not realistic. There are plenty of tasks that graduate students can do such as translating, writing test questions or assignments. The result of this combined effort is something that PEOI’s volunteers can really be proud of and that can make a difference in the lives of many students,” John Petroff says.

Minh Vo from Viet Nam holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and works as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company in the USA. She joined PEOI in 2006 and developed two online courses, ‘Pharmacokinetics – Concepts and Applications’ and ‘Clinical Pharmacokinetics’. She also acts as board member for the organization. “It was a great collaboration with much assistance and guidance from the director of PEOI. I also have a great team. Our virtual working relationship is not much different from a face-to-face relationship. There are no obstacles with online communication tools (e.g., email, discussion forum) to accomplish our goals.”

Punam Kumar from India completed her Master’s degree in Botany and is a mother and housewife. She has been volunteering for PEOI since 2007 and created the ‘Introduction to Botany’ course, an equivalent of more than 450 pages of textbook material and 187 images and drawings showing the inner features of plants, cells and processes. With the help of her son, she learned HTML code in order to design the tables, place style tags, and create lists and links to other pages. She was drawn to PEOI’s mission to support free and open education and enjoyed the learning experience of her assignment: “It enabled me to contribute and spread my knowledge from the confines of my household as well as helped expand my own knowledge base.”

Dennis Dantic, a Filipino expatriate living in the UK, has a Master of Public Health and works as team leader at a centre for people with mental health issues. Having joined PEOI in January 2010, Dennis volunteers an average of six hours per week to lead the development of the Public Health course, manage the recruitment process of online volunteers for the writing of public health courses and coordinate the development of two courses, ‘Foundations of Public Health’ and ‘Biostatistics’. “I wish that more people would become part of this innovative and exciting trend to help people using the power of technology and the Internet. This is a very rewarding endeavour. There are so many things to do, so many things to learn.”

PEOI June 2010 Newsletter

Greetings to all PEOI volunteers:

The news this month is that 245 new students registered at PEOI in May 2010, as indicated below. This is an extraordinary number of new student registrations in less than a month. It is undeniably attributable to the wonderful article about PEOI published in Online Volunteering May 2010 Newsletter, for which PEOI is deeply grateful.

PEOI is humbled by such recognition by this important United Nations agency. Although we are all working very hard at PEOI, to some extent this surge in student interest is not deserved because PEOI still has only a handful of courses that we consider as ready for student enrolment. It is imperative that we redouble out efforts to get more courses complete, such as those that are only missing test questions: for instance, English courses in “Introduction to Journalism”, “Chemistry I”, “Introduction to Java”, “Fundamentals of Nursing Practice”, “Pharmacokinetics – Concepts and Applications” and “Clinical Pharmacology”. And there are many more such courses in other languages.

To bring this new work emphasis into focus, there are now two new work classifications at PEOI. One is for “concept summary writer” and the other is for “review questions writer”. As you remember, and as the “Authors” section explanations indicate, the process of test questions development starts with all concepts (that is, indeed, every single unique idea) in each chapter to be catalogued in a concepts summary file from which review and test questions are seeded. Since the concepts are already written in detail in the text of the chapter, the person who is to write a concepts summary does not need to be an expert in the subject, but a skilled editor instead.

PEOI has a large group of English language experts (several hundred at last count) who are invited to join in this urgent work. In fact, I invite all of you, language wizzards, to visit PEOI’s “Summarize concepts” procedure, to verify how easy it is to extract automatically concepts from chapters, to edit the concepts, and to seed the questions. Of course, you must not be shy with HTML since all PEOI’s pages are in HTML, but you can ignore all lines that contain code, and deal only with the plain text in between. Read the guidelines, give it a try, and tell me if there is a better way of doing this work. Thanks.

Other new developments:

New courses started or taken over in May 2010:
– “Introduction to algorithms” by [Dianing] Yudono (faculty #5355) in English
– “Intellectual Property” by Jaya Murthy & Robert Mayer in English
– “Top quality management” by Chong Aik  (faculty #5401) in English

New course imported in May 2010:
– “Software Engineering for Web Applications” imported by Zeina Shahla  (faculty #5344)

As in the past, this newsletter will cover
– presentation of new volunteers,
– review of statistics,
– major recent work completed,
– what PEOI is working on now.

NEW VOLUNTEERS WELCOME

We are all delighted to have the following new volunteers among us:

8 staff volunteers

Harerimana Ally Clair (staff #5052) from Rwanda, Editor
Bayowa Babajide (staff #5050) from Nigeria, Instructor
Ilana Grimberg (staff #5060) from Brazil, Translator
Ancilla Jerez (staff #5059) from Hungary, Project manager
Anderson KOMENAN (staff #5058) from Cote d&39;Ivoire, Country representative
Celia Martinez Fernandez (staff #5061) from Mexico, Translator
S.M. Rasid (staff #5063) from Bangladesh, Internet search specialist
Luís Silva (staff #5056) from Portugal, Project manager

59 faculty volunteers

Chong Aik (faculty #5401) from Singapore, Author
Mohamed Altemamy (faculty #5349) from Egypt, Instructor
Mariya Avtomanova (faculty #5333) from Uzbekistan, Translator
shradha baranwal (faculty #5361) from India, Assignments writer
Hema Bhagavathi (faculty #5334) from India, Author
Dr Gouri Goutam Borthakur (faculty #5354) from India, Reviewer
Claire Checroun (faculty #5370) from France, Author
Jessica Clingerman (faculty #5379) from United States, Reference research specialist
Deborah Damaru-Odunuga (faculty #5352) from Nigeria, Reference research specialist
J. de Barros Dias (faculty #5337) from Portugal, Translator
Duarte de Lima Mayer (faculty #5395) from Portugal, Assignments writer
Olga Demyanova (faculty #5343) from Russia, Translator
amelia esteban (faculty #5382) from Philippines, Reference research specialist
Marianne Farraj (faculty #5389) from Lebanon, Author
mitali ghosh (faculty #5335) from India, Country representative
Girija Goleria (faculty #5386) from India, Author
Monica Gouveia (faculty #5397) from Portugal, Translator
Nidhi Gupta (faculty #5384) from India, Internet search specialist
Clemens Harten (faculty #5356) from Germany, Translator
Shafagh Helalat (faculty #5336) from Iran, Translator
Florentino Heras (faculty #5365) from Spain, Translator
Manju James (faculty #5394) from India, Author
aditi joshi (faculty #5380) from India, Author
Veena Joshi (faculty #5388) from India, Author
Maruf Kandakov (faculty #5383) from Tajikistan, Translator
Maria Kantartzopoulou (faculty #5392) from Greece, Reference research specialist
Md. Karim (faculty #5346) from Bangladesh, Internet search specialist
Sebastian Ko (faculty #5367) from China, Author
Shanila Kunchimon (faculty #5385) from India, Reviewer
NKUNDIMANA Longin (faculty #5353) from Rwanda, Cases writer
Mary Lorenzana (faculty #5341) from Canada, Author
Ani Melkonyan (faculty #5378) from Armenia, Translator
Khine Min (faculty #5338) from Myanmar, Translator
saad mjkahin (faculty #5358) from Somalia, Import course
Krystel Moussally (faculty #5396) from Lebanon, Author
Saule Mukhamejanova (faculty #5357) from Kazakhstan, Translator
Tuan Nguyen (faculty #5387) from Viet Nam, Author
Shailesh Nirgudkar (faculty #5360) from India, Author
Georges Owona Mbida Otto (faculty #5359) from Cameroon, Author
Francine OWONO (faculty #5363) from Cameroon, Reference research specialist
Shilpa Pavangat (faculty #5376) from India, Illustrator
Lin Pree (faculty #5366) from United States, Author
Padma Ramnathan (faculty #5368) from Australia, Author
Reinaldo Ricchi Jr. (faculty #5339) from Brazil, Author
Erasto Santamaria (faculty #5347) from El Salvador, Author
Emmy Sari (faculty #5345) from Indonesia, Translator
Zeina Shahla (faculty #5344) from Syrian Arab Republic, Import course
Zafar Siddiqui (faculty #5374) from India, Student adviser
Jessica St. Amour (faculty #5369) from Canada, Author
JOSEPH LATYR THIAO (faculty #5372) from Senegal,
Marcelo Tsustsui (faculty #5371) from Brazil, Translator
PREMANAND V N (faculty #5391) from India, Author
Deepesh Velachery (faculty #5393) from India, Author
Cindy Werner (faculty #5398) from Germany, Country representative
[Dianing] Yudono (faculty #5355) from Indonesia, Author
Evghenia Zotieva (faculty #5342) from Moldova, Translator

one board member

Robert Murray (board #5221) from Australia

If you have news about yourself that you would like to share with PEOI volunteer community, please, do not hesitate to let me know.

REVIEW OF STATISTICS

In May 2010, 85 new faculty and staff volunteers joined PEOI. This brings to 3,890 the number of PEOI’s registered volunteers in June 2010; they come from 149 countries.  By comparison, there were 72 new volunteers registered in May of previous year.

In May 2010, 245 new students registered at PEOI, compared to 116 a year ago. This brings the total student registrations to 6,348 in June 2010. They come from 196 different countries.

You can see the break down of student statistics in “Statistics – students” part of the “Students” section. Likewise you can see the breakdown of volunteers and  information about individual volunteers in “Statistics – volunteers” part of the “Projects” section.

MAJOR WORK RECENTLY COMPLETED

If you notice errors in any part of this or any other newsletter, please send me a message. The following is a listing of most of the work performed in May 2010:

– punam kumar (faculty #3036) contributed to chapters 17 and 18 of Introduction to botany in English
– Barry McCullagh (faculty #4184) contributed to sections
ch2a ch2b ch2z ch3a and ch3b of Beginning Computer
Programming using Java in English
– Fran?se BRUNELLE (faculty #4227) translated sections
ch1b ch1d3 ch1d4 ch1d5 ch1d6 ch1d7 ch1d8 ch1q ch1x ch1y
ch1z ch2a ch2c2 ch2e2 ch2q ch2r ch2x ch2y ch2z ch3a1 ch3a2 ch3a3
ch3b ch3c ch3d1 ch3d2 ch3d3 ch3d4 ch3e ch3f ch3g1 ch3g2 ch3g3 ch3g4
ch3g5 ch3g6 ch3g7 ch3h ch3q ch3x ch3y ch3z ch4a ch4b ch4c ch4d ch4e
ch4f ch4g ch4h ch4i ch4j ch4q ch4r ch4x ch4y ch4z ch5a ch5b ch5c
ch5d ch5e ch5f1 ch5f2 ch5f3 ch5f4 ch5g ch5h ch5i ch5j ch5q ch5r
ch5x ch5y ch5z ch6a ch6b ch6c ch6d ch6e ch6q ch6x ch7a ch7b ch7c1
ch7c2 ch7c3 ch7c4 ch7c5 ch7q ch7x ch7z ch8c ch8d ch8x ch8z ch9a
ch9c ch9y ch10b ch10e3 ch10e5 ch10e7 ch11z ch12d3 ch12d4 ch12d5
ch12q ch12z ch13c3 ch13d2 ch13q ch13y and ch15b1 of
ANALYSE FINANCIERE in French
– Fran?se BRUNELLE (faculty #4227) translated chapters
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and 10 of Communication de masse in French
– Sijie Zhu (faculty #4650) contributed to titlelist
in procedure text in Chinese Simplified
– Manmeet Kaur (faculty #4946) contributed to chapter
1 of Introduction to Pharmacy in English
– Jeremy Ecle (faculty #5008) contributed to section
ch1z of Introduction to physics in English
– Beatriz Jacques (faculty #5138) contributed to sections
ch10a ch10z ch11i ch14a ch14b and ch14z of Human Physiology in English
– Reginaldo Cazubek (faculty #5210) translated chapters
6 and 7 of Microeconomics in Portuguese
– Falk Wienhold (faculty #5287) contributed to section
chem11 of Chemistry I in English
– Derya AGIS (faculty #5289) contributed to sections
ch5b and ch5c of ESL level 3 in English
– Sahar Sadeddin (faculty #5316) contributed to chapter
1 of Human resources training and development in English
– Aseem Singhal (faculty #5319) contributed to chapters
1 and 2 of C++ and OOP programming in English
– Blessings Msowoya (faculty #5330) contributed to chapters
0 1 and 2 of Computer networks in English
– Reinaldo Ricchi Jr. (faculty #5339) contributed to
section chem1 of Chemistry I in English
– Zeina Shahla (faculty #5344) contributed to potentialcourses
in procedure text in English
– Emmy Sari (faculty #5345) contributed to textsection2
in procedure text in Indonesian
– Marcelo Tsustsui (faculty #5371) translated section
ch1d1 of Financial analysis in Portuguese
– Girija Goleria (faculty #5386) contributed to sections
ch9n1 ch9q ch9summary and ch9z of Java Programming in English
– Marianne Farraj (faculty #5389) contributed to section
ch4q of Finance fundamentals in English
– Fran?se BRUNELLE (faculty #4227) translated test questions
in chapters 1 2 and 3 of ANALYSE FINANCIERE in French
– Sijie Zhu (faculty #4650) translated test questions
in chapters 2 3 8 14 and 15 of ????? 1 in Chinese Simplified
– Sijie Zhu (faculty #4650) translated test questions
in chapter 1 of Accounting II in Chinese Simplified
– nalini asfaroyani (faculty #4784) translated test questions
in chapter 5 of Accounting I in Indonesian
– Luluk Widyawati (faculty #5129) translated test questions
in chapter 6 of Accounting II in Indonesian
– Mariya Avtomanova (faculty #5333) translated test questions
in chapters 9 and 11 of ?À??? I in Russian
– Olga Demyanova (faculty #5343) translated test questions
in chapter 1 of ???????? in Russian
– Emmy Sari (faculty #5345) translated test questions
in chapter 12 of Accounting II in Indonesian
– punam kumar (faculty #3036) uploaded 1 image
for Introduction to botany in English
– Daniel Paiva (faculty #5214) entered readings
for Business Plan in English
– Daniel Paiva (faculty #5214) entered readings
for International law in English
– Daniel Paiva (faculty #5214) entered readings
for Capital markets in English
– Daniel Paiva (faculty #5214) entered readings
for Introduction to political science in English
– Derya AGIS (faculty #5289) uploaded 1 image
for ESL level 3 in English
– Rajen Paudel (faculty #5295) proposed course
for Digital Image Processing in English
– Emirlane Carmen Louis (faculty #5306) created course files
for INTRODUCTION A LA CLIMATOLOGIE in French
– Emirlane Carmen Louis (faculty #5306) created course files
for Plan d?affaire in French
– Aseem Singhal (faculty #5319) created course files
for C++ and OOP programming in English
– Reinaldo Ricchi Jr. (faculty #5339) entered readings
for Chemistry I in English
– Mohamed Altemamy (faculty #5349) uploaded 1 image
for Chemistry I in English
– [Dianing] Yudono (faculty #5355) proposed course
for Introduction to Algorithm in English
– manu jain (staff #4951) contributed to chapters 1 2
16 and 17 of HTML Basics in English
– Michelle Bobala (staff #4986) contributed to sections
ch4a and ch5a of ESL level 1 in English
– Neelam Dadhwal (staff #5032) contributed to chapter
1 of Introduction to Visual Basic .NET in English
– Melania Intriago (staff #5046) translated general
text chapter 1 in Spanish
– Melania Intriago (staff #5046) translated chapter
6 of Mass communication – Introduction to journalism in Spanish
– Ilana Grimberg (staff #5060) translated chapter 7 of
Microeconomics in Portuguese
– Roberta Wendrzycki (staff #5035) translated test questions
in chapter 1 of Macroeconomics in Portuguese

Thank you for all this good work. It should be mentioned that this work is only the one recorded when authors, editors, translators and other volunteers are online, make use of PEOI’s procedures, and their work is recorded. It is known that twice as much work is carried out offline, which is not recorded, and we thank those who put in all these efforts.

WHAT PEOI IS WORKING ON NOW

As mentioned above, if you have suggestions on how to develop review and test questions easier, please tell me. This pertains to “Summarize concepts”, “Create questions” and “Edit questions” procedures. If you see problems with any of these, I need to know.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

If you have been on the side lines and have not been active at PEOI for some time, it is imperative that you rejoin us. We need to earn the trust that students put in us, and PEOI needs you to help in this important work. Thanks.