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MOOC adds MOOC appeal
Online course is helping teachers adjust to delivering education online.
UNSW’ s new MOOC is not only helping teachers in Australia and overseas deliver education online, it’ s also receiving accolades from the US president.
The MOOC called Learning to Teach Online, run by Coursera, delivers professional development courses for free to teachers in the US Department of Education and was endorsed by President Obama last year.
Obama and the US Department of Education have chosen the MOOC to become part of the ConnectED Initiative, a professional development program for K – 12 teachers.
“[ Learning to Teach Online ] is the only
Australian MOOC chosen to be part of that, which is fantastic, and there are only 50 worldwide that are part of that project,” said Simon McIntyre, director of learning and innovation at UNSW Art & Design and one of the course’ s instructors.
“ It’ s fantastic to be able to build something or create a course that can help so many different educators around the world and make their classroom experience a lot better and that’ s what it’ s all about for us,” McIntyre said.
The MOOC is based on award-winning educational resources developed by UNSW Art & Design. It is aimed at teachers and prospective educators from kindergarten to Year 12, and higher education through to
community colleges. The second offering of the free six-week course starts on July 6.
McIntyre says the basic premise of the MOOC is to help educators get the practical tips and strategies they need to start working more effectively online.
“ Now as educators we’ re faced with that changing landscape and there’ s no way around it,” he said.“ Online learning is here to stay in one form or another.
“ This is really about helping educators determine where they are in that changing landscape, helping them determine what they need to do to fit in with their own teaching and their own discipline and then provide them some strategies where they can develop their own ideas and strategies they can apply in what they do.”
McIntyre further explained that in today’ s teaching environment there is a high demand for digital literacy skills in educators.
“ It’ s no longer enough to be able to be disciplinary experts,” he said.“ We also have to be able to teach our students how to work, study and communicate in the online space and we need to model that for them.
“ The gap is that there are so many teachers out there who need to develop those digital literacy skills so they can pass them on to their students and teach effectively in these spaces, because that’ s how industry is continually shifting. It’ s using the online technologies a lot more as a matter of course.” n
Daddy depression
Study examines mental illness in new fathers and how to address it.
Understanding the transition by men into fatherhood and the tools that can help them is the focus of new research launched by Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology.
The study, funded by beyondblue, aims to promote satisfaction in fatherhood and examine the effectiveness of using online interventions to prevent perinatal distress amongst dads; 200 new mothers and fathers are to be assessed.
Researcher Dr Kyra Hamilton, from Griffith Menzies Health Institute Queensland, said the mental implications of new fatherhood lack significant research, despite potential for mental illness in new dads.
“ Unfortunately, the role of the father is not widely researched or documented as yet,” Hamilton said.“ However, we do know that men are just as likely as mothers to suffer from anxiety and depression after the birth of their first child." beyondblue explains that while fathers don’ t go through the physical and hormonal changes of pregnancy, some struggle to adjust to parenting. The organisation estimates that 5 per cent of men experience depression in the year following the birth of their child, and the risk of this increases if their partner is also experiencing mental illness. Fathers who have gone through mental illness earlier in their lives are also more likely to experience perinatal depression.
Men and women generally experience similar symptoms when going through depression or anxiety, though beyondblue said men are more likely to experience frustration and irritability as part of their symptoms, along with increased anger or drug and alcohol abuse. n
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