Human Rights-based Approach to Dignity in Care (DIGNISPACE) MOOC

Members of the Online Course Production Team were recently invited to the launch of the latest MOOC, Human Rights-based Approach to Dignity in Care (DIGNISPACE). Marcello Crolla (Instructional Designer) & Ari Badlishah (Digital Engagement Officer) share their experiences of working on the MOOC and the unique opportunity taken by the Dignispace team to create a launch event for this course.

Marcello Crolla (Instructional Designer)

The launch of a new MOOC is always an exciting time for all the teams involved as everyone gets to view their efforts in its finished form. Earlier this year we had the pleasure of working with Dr Leah Macaden (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Elaine Webster (University of Strathclyde) on the creation of the Human Rights-based Approach to Dignity in Care (DIGNISPACE) MOOC. The course focusses on dignity in care and looks at the human rights based approach to dignity in care.

We often work on a variety of different courses from all disciplines and get the opportunity to have a small insight into the world that these particular courses are looking to explore. During the initial phase of discussions with the team, we decided that the course would run on Coursera, due to its large global reach. Initial uptake for the course has been very promising, with figures reaching well over 700 enrolled users in the first couple of months of the course being open for enrolment.

One of the unique aspects of this particular MOOC is that the team involved with Dignispace had organised a launch event for the MOOC. This official launch event was held on 29^th May at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, inviting people from across the health & education sectors to come along and hear about Leah & Elaine’s journey on creating the course. Attendees were given the opportunity to participate in the course and complete activities on the day which were setup by the team, and I was glad to hear a lot of complimentary comments on the course and how they feel it would be useful for others in their sector. Many in the room were able to access the courses on mobile devices which was well received, and many enjoyed the fact that the course could be accessed easily on a variety of devices as many learners accessing this would not necessarily be accessing this from traditional desktop or set workstations. We hope that learners will be able to enjoy and make the most of the great work that has gone into the development of this course from the entire team behind this MOOC.

Ari Badlishah (Digital Engagement Officer)

I have worked on marketing several MOOCs during my time at the University of Edinburgh, but I was extremely impressed by the Dignispace team who was the first to have an official launch event for their MOOC.

I had the opportunity to sit down at a table with a diverse group of professionals from different sectors – academia, healthcare, and charity. Following the group activities led by Dr Macaden, we had insightful discussions about what respecting someone’s dignity in the context of healthcare means to us. We also had a look at the course content itself, particularly the pyramid of empowerment which was a very interesting concept to us as it highlighted on how patients should be supported to understand their rights.

Our MOOCs use many different ways to engage learners such as: reading, practice assignments, discussion prompts, and quizzes. One lady at my table was very fascinated by the quizzes in Coursera, as many of them were situational multiple-choice questions where she could clearly learn from the differences between the correct and wrong options on how to act in a particular situation.

It was wonderful to see people taking home the promotional flyers and bookmarks we helped design, featuring QR codes that link to the MOOC. These materials have even reached people all the way in 4 universities in India and South Korea that Dr. Macaden was invited to as a Churchill Fellow. It’s mind blowing to think about!

We from the Online Course Production team sincerely hope that the Dignispace course will reach many learners worldwide and that the content will be of benefit to them. I am confident that taking this course will help learners uphold and advocate Dignity using a human rights based approach in their practice.