School of Health and Social Care

We thought you might like to know a bit more about our School, and therefore, the context in which this course is delivered. If any of you are in London, drop in and say "Hi!".

The Vimeo video stream should be clever enough to detect the type of video stream you need for your device. If you do have difficulties with watching the video please leave us a message on the General Questions discussion board.

Course Director's Introduction

The Vimeo video stream should be clever enough to detect the type of video stream you need for your device. If you do have difficulties with watching the video please leave us a message on the General Questions discussion board.

Course Structure

The course takes place over a six week period. Each week is a 'module' in canvas.net terms. Each of these modules contains a mix of text, image and video-based materials which should take around three hours to work through. There are also exercises to allow course participants to test their learning as they go through the course.

Although the course team will be involved in many of the discussions that take place, it is hoped that participants will not only post their own views, but will comment on others to create a meaningful debate.

Who are you?

We want very much to know who you are and will be starting this right away in week one. However, there are a few quick things to do before the modules start that will help everyone know each other at least on a cursory level.

Set up your profile in Canvas

We plan to have discussions here in Canvas and to that extent, having a profile will help us better know each other and have access to each other. Take a moment to do that now. Instructions are located here.

To learn more about us...

Keiron Spires Principal Lecturer eLearning

Sara Spiteri Digitally Enhanced Learning Support

Weekly Modules

Each week a new module will be available and will provide you with new material to explore and exercises or tasks to help you test your own learning. To strengthen your learning, and to help you better understand the assessment, recognition and management of patients with deteriorating physical health, we expect your participation in discussions here on the Canvas site.

Credit / Certificates

All participants are eligible to receive a certificate of completion for this course. The requirements are to complete all of the tasks marked as mandatory for the certificate. Details of how to print your certificate, or how to apply for an LSBU validated certificate will be in the last module.

Discussions & Communications

Each week there will be exercises to post to the discussion boards. We are not planning to use social media outside of the Canvas site because of the constraints on the use of social media for those of us who are health care or education professionals.

To Communicate With Your Instructor Canvas has a messaging system you can use to send messages to your instructor should you have issues or concerns.

Netiquette Guidelines

Be careful posting anything that is personal to you or others. Be considerate and kind to other course members.
If your posting is for a specific person or group, make sure you address it to them. Realise, however, that others will probably read it.
Make sure everyone realises when you are trying to be funny. It is easy for messages to be misinterpreted since there are no physical gestures or voice inflections that accompany the text.
When responding to someone's comments, explain to whom and what you are commenting on. Do not include their whole posting. Try to use only the appropriate quotes or a summary.
Remember to read what has previously been posted by others to avoid repeating comments.
Make sure you are posting under the appropriate heading or thread.
Cite your references.
Be brief when posting. Since reading other's comments or articles can be very time consuming, try to be straight to the point.
All students are expected to follow the Canvas Student Code of Conduct.

Time Commitment

If you were to read everything posted in the module and complete every assignment and discussion, we anticipate that you would spend 3-6 hours a week on this course.

Using a MOOC

If you have never participated in a MOOC before, there will be a lot going on and it is very important that you stay focused and don't get caught up in the noise! We highly recommend watching Dave Cormier's 'Success In a MOOC'. In this short video, he outlines some key survival tips in making MOOCs a good experience.

Getting Help

Need technical support with Canvas? Click on the word "Help" in the upper right-hand corner of your Canvas screen. From there, you will be able to search the Canvas Guides, ask a question, or suggest a feature. There is also a collection of "How to" guides found at How to use Canvas Network.

Need course content help? We encourage you to post first on the course General Discussions board. We will try to respond to questions on the General Discussions board within 48 hours Monday-Friday. The course runs on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).