Saturday, April 2, 2011

Why I am joining a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Mobile Learning

I have joined the MobiMOOC course. This follows up on the Facilitating Online Course I did in 2010.

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. Here is short video explanation of a MOOC.


The MoboMOOC will have many participates from all other the world and from many backgrounds. It is now only day two of the course and already several hundred have signed up. The course is open and online. And it is a course.
The subject is on mobile learning. I like the idea of learning and I think it sits well with health promotion focus on capacity building. There is also a buzz around mobile health (or #mhealth).
I suspect that the coming of smart phones will be disruptive technology to health promotion/public health/community health. Elsewhere in this blog, I have called this Public Health 2.0 /Health Promotion 2.0.
For the past 18 months, I been excited by potential of mobile devices to transform what is possible in health promotion practice. Health promotion has been defined as the "the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health".
I have been developing some project ideas and funding submissions and developing my networks. I will write more about these some of these ideas in future blog posts. Some have stalled from lack of funding and some are moving ahead.
What I find most exciting about mobile health is not so much the gadgets but the theory around how to use them and what it means for collaborate with others to solve important social and health problems.
What is want to learn is how to use new Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices to build capacity to promote health  in networks of educational, human and health services.
I will learn that in part from continuous learning, in part hopefully from this course's materials  and from the unfolding connections I hope to make with the learning resources and people I encounter via this course.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Malcolm, really nice post. I work in the medical sector as well and have been collaborating on mobile projects in this area (mainly for projects in less accessible areas).
    Will get mHealth links in as the course proceeds.

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  2. Thanks for kind words, Inge. I live and work in regional Australia in one of our massive states, Queensland. The potential for Web 2.0 and mhealth/ mlearning tools to defeat remoteness excites me. I loose sleep thinking about what is becoming possible.

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  3. Hi Malcolm - interesting post. I'm involved in undergraduate medical education and keen to explore how mlearning can support our students' learning. Some of my clinical colleagues have been using mobile phones to support young people with diabetes. I think there's growing interest in how mobile technologies can support public health and health promotion.

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