The MOOC ‘Heart Health: A Beginner’s Guide to Cardiovascular Disease’ offered by the University of Reading (United Kingdom) from 24th February until 22nd March 2020
Website:https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/heart-health
The Heart Health MOOC is a free online course taken by about 600 participants, to learn about the structure and function of the heart and the main conditions that can affect it (heart attacks, strokes, angina, hypertension, heart failure, valvular disease). Participants vary from school aged through to retired people, many of whom are affected by heart conditions or know someone affected.
The course lasts several weeks with learning materials including videos, a home practical, and an activity where participants try to find out about a topic at home. Participants post comments and might ask questions. The course uses the role of the mentors to check the comments and to answer any questions, as well as encouraging the participants or stimulating interesting ideas during the first 4 weeks of the course.
TAPAS students Delia and Stefano volunteered as MOOC mentors and wrote about their experience…
“It was an interesting and different mentoring experience. For us the activity mainly consisted of a bit of literature searching and finding the proper words to make the explanation easy and clear to the students. It was challenging to reply to questions about several aspects of cardiovascular diseases, since we are mainly experts in platelet biology, and to be able to explain in a clear and concise way. Given that the students have different backgrounds, a wide range of age, and different goals that they want to achieve, it was a bit difficult sometimes to not go into too much detail. We learnt a lot about some aspects of cardiovascular sciences and we quite enjoyed being mentors of the course.”
The students are also involved in the next run of the Heart Health MOOC, which began in September.
About MOOCs
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available for anyone to enroll. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance your career and deliver quality educational experiences at scale.
Millions of people around the world use MOOCs to learn for a variety of reasons, including: career development, changing careers, college preparations, supplemental learning, lifelong learning, corporate eLearning & training, and more.
MOOCs have dramatically changed the way the world learns.