Veterinary online learning programme wins award

NZVA MEDIA RELEASE

19.10.07

Veterinary online learning programme wins award

A veterinary online learning programme won the New Zealand Open Source Awards' community organisations section on Wednesday night.

The VetScholar programme, developed by the New Zealand Veterinary Association's continuing education arm, offers veterinarians and veterinary nurses an easily accessible and flexible way of continuing their education in their own time, and from home or work, whether in New Zealand or overseas. Since its launch in February last year, at least 750 students have participated in VetScholar courses.

"This represents a phenomenal embrace of a new technology by a profession that is committed to continuing education," says chair of the veterinary continuing education board Mark Robson.

VetScholar won the category of 'Open Source Use in Community Organisations', which recognises outstanding use of open source for community organisations, including charities and other not-for-profit groups. The awards attracted more than 130 nominations across seven categories.

About 200 people attended the awards ceremony, organised by the New Zealand Open Source Society. The Minister for Information Technology Hon David Cunliffe spoke at the event and said that as an MP he owed a profound debt to open source technologies.

"The systems that support our core democratic processes in New Zealand - the Register of Electors and the electoral management systems - are built on open source technologies," said Mr Cunliffe.

William Hickson accepted VetScholar's trophy and explained how the team had come to choose open source software.

"When we decided to pilot distance education for veterinarians our initial concept was to get tutors to write material, which we could fax to participants and then wait for faxed back quizzes for the tutors to mark, possibly with a conference call for direct interaction with tutors.

"We thought there must be a better way, and discovered MOODLE - open source software available on the internet for anyone to use and adapt. We ran a pilot and the participants loved it. The licensed systems available didn't have the same functionality so we took MOODLE, added a few cool features and the VetScholar programme took off."

The New Zealand Open Source Awards recognise New Zealand organisations and individuals who have developed and are using projects with 'open source' software, or that promote open source. The awards are intended to raise awareness of the open source advantage for New Zealand by celebrating success stories based on real achievements that have made a difference already.

The term open source refers to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions. This allows users to create software content through incremental individual effort or through collaboration. Open source is changing the way people and organisations collaborate and innovate to achieve common goals.

ENDS

© Scoop Media