Presentation for the 2014 SAAHE conference, where I discuss a project I ran in 2013. We created an open online course in professional ethics and had our students complete the course in collaboration with qualified physiotherapists from around the world.

1. creating and implementing
an open, online course
in professional ethics
michael rowe
department of physiotherapy
university of the western cape

2. background
●
where is the value in a course? content?
engagement? social spaces? (Cormier & Siemens, 2010)
●
massive online obsessive compulsion (dolan, 2014)
●
development of skills that exist “outside” the
formal curriculum, including lifelong learning,
personal knowledge management & the
effective use of web-based platforms and
services (fini, 2009)

3. rationale for open, online
●
clinical practice is complex, teaching simplistic
●
knowledge is increasingly distributed, connected
●
digital information and interaction with
technology changes how we negotiate
understanding
●
wanted to explore networked, collaborative
learning in an open, online course

4. aim
the aim of this study was to determine if an open
online course in professional ethics could help
students develop generic graduate attributes:
- lifelong learning
- critical attitudes towards knowledge, authority
- confidence to engage across difference
- dealing with uncertainty

5. method
design the course collaboratively
ran course over 6 weeks
interview students & transcribe
qualitative analysis of transcriptions
identify themes

6. participants
52 third year UWC
students
28 “externals” (UK, Canada,
USA, India, NZ, Estonia,
Saudi Arabia, SA)

9. process
read the weekly activity
reflect, question, research
write a draft blog post
review the posts of others, comment
reflect, question, research
refine own blog post, connect
publish

11. each student
needed to do
peer review of
3 other
students
looked at:
- content
- format
- structure

12. used likert
scales and
open-ended
questions to
give feedback
to peers

13. student feedback

15. different ways of interacting
“I could express myself and I felt it was easier for
me than talking in class. Because I could do it in
my own space, I could do it in my own time. I
didn't feel like I was being judged, so it was easier
to express myself because I'm very shy.”
“But you were in public?”
“Yes, but I was behind a screen.”

16. different ways of interacting (2)
“when you talk then it’s out there and everyone’s
heard it, but when you’re blogging you can
backspace. Sometimes you think a certain way
but then to actually express it and have other
people understand what you’re trying to say is
more difficult. So it made you think through your
thoughts and organise them and then write it
how you want people to understand it, which is
very different to talking in class.

17. different ways of interacting (3)
“I found that I'm more willing to listen to other people's
opinions and think and analyse what they’re saying. You’re
not just shutting their opinion out.”
“One of your posts that got a lot comments was saying
that too often we’re listening to other people with one
ear, waiting for that pause to say, ‘Yes, but...’.”
“To attack their opinion.”
“Ja, without really listening.”

18. different ways of managing time
“I felt like I had to be in a specific mind-space in
order to get my points across. So maybe if I had
to be here at eight o’clock on a Wednesday
morning I wouldn’t be wanting to think about
that. So when I wanted to work on it I would
produce better work because it’s what I wanted
to do at that specific time.”

19. context & personal learning
“You had to put it into your own life context. You
never really could understand what the next topic
was unless you thought back onto a time where
you experienced it, and then it started to make
sense to me – just having the word up there
wasn’t helping; you still had to provide your own
context and your own information.”

20. context & personal learning (2)
“It made me feel responsible for my own learning. I
could choose how much input I wanted to put in and
that would determine how much I got out of the
course. I think you can get a lot out of things when you
can chose how much effort you want to put into it.”
“I felt free to think for myself. Instead of being told:
This is what you need to think, I could form my own
opinion.”

21. validation
“it felt really cool to be able to speak to actual
physios and then they have the same view as you
and it made it feel like a whole lot more real that
someone [who has finished] four years of study
was thinking the same way.”

22. the “facebook” effect
It was frustrating because I wanted to add tags
but I didn’t know what that means. I wanted to
add links but I didn’t know how. So, I wanted to
make it cooler because I wanted other people to
be interested in it, but I didn't know how.”

23. dealing with difference
“How do I go about answering [a patient]
without imposing my opinion on them? It
needs to be an informed decision from the
patient’s side, so how do they decide if you only
give them your opinion? You need to give them
both sides of a story so that they can process it
for themselves.”

24. dealing with uncertainty
“You’re being marked not on facts but on theories
and ideas and what you think. And I think that
scares a lot of people because if they don’t know
that 'this is right', or 'this is wrong', they’ll go on
thinking 'I don’t know it'.”

25. dealing with uncertainty (2)
“There may not be one right answer to everything. There
are guidelines but I think it’s more open because everyone
is different; every patient is different. They respond
differently and every clinician performs it differently. So it’s
working out what’s best for you and knowing that even
though that person does it differently it’s still beneficial for
the patient.”
“When I was on clinical practice, I listened to what the
clinician would say, think about it, and then go speak to a 4th
year, speak to different people and listen to their reasoning
– and then from that I would just adjust my own thinking.”

26. challenging others
Would you be more confident now in challenging someone’s opinion?
“Yes, because knowing yourself and knowing why you think the
way you do – you’ll be more confident in expressing yourself.”
“It emphasised the importance of having evidence to support
your opinion. If you want to challenge someone you must have
evidence. You can’t just say, 'I disagree and this is what I would do'.
You must have evidence to back up your thoughts.
“It was nice to learn that there is a professional way of challenging
other people in a way that’s not offensive.”
“It was the way in which people commented and responded that
made me realise that they're not going to take offence if you
challenge their idea; they really do want to discuss and learn.”

27. themes
different ways of interacting
different ways of managing time
context and personal learning
validation
dealing with difference
dealing with uncertainty
challenging others

28. conclusion
Open online courses offer innovative teaching
and learning opportunities that can enhance the
student learning experience. As social media and
other online technologies become increasingly
embedded in higher education, teachers will
need to be familiar with the context of learning in
open, online spaces.

29. thank you
@michael_rowe
mrowe.co.za/blog
mrowe@uwc.ac.za