A while ago a group of us in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences were tasked with developing an online Postgraduate Certificate in Public Health to complement BU’s well established MSc Public Health course provision. The aim of this development was to offer three units of the course to be studied online part-time. The proposal for creating online learning materials offered staff an exciting development opportunity but understandably there was some apprehension. This was not only because of the new challenge of producing online materials but also because we were conscious that the resources produced should reflect our norm for high quality course provision.

A team of learning technologists and academics was established and one of our first activities was to come together to learn from others’ experiences of online course development within the university. We wanted to determine our vision and agree an aspirational approach to unit development. A particular consideration was the existing university fusion agenda and we wanted to use the range of research and education expertise of our colleagues and the university’s staff within our developments. Furthermore we were stimulated by the opportunity to develop a template for study units and to incorporate multi-media in the creation of the learning resources. Through discussion, we developed a structure for the course based on established instructional design principles in order to ensure consistency across the 3 units to be developed.

One of our key aims has been to create engaging learning materials. The units are visually appealing and interactive in order to accommodate a wide range of potential users. We placed particular emphasis on the visual nature of the materials for example videos, TED talks, and images. The learning materials are user-centred so that students learn the unit’s content by completing tasks at their own pace and with opportunities to interact with instructors and peers through the use of blogs, encompassed within the tasks for the unit modules.

Another key aim has been to personalise the ‘distance’ learning process with academic staff becoming familiar to students via their recordings and being available for webinar and tutorial activities through a range of media.

Currently we are in the process of piloting materials and developing links between units ready for the online course which will be commencing in September 2016. See the following link for the course details: https://www1.bournemouth.ac.uk/study/courses/msc-public-health .

Contact lnorton@bournemouth.ac.uk