Introduction for the PHT402 Professional Ethics course that is due to begin in about a week. The course is being run at the University of the Western Cape, in conjunction with Physiopedia and aims to explore different ways of developing generic attributes that are relevant for ethical professional practice in the healthcare professions.
Hi everyone. My name is Michael and I’m one of the co-ordinators for the PHT402 course. You can read a little bit about me here and for an overview of the things I’m interested in, you can see what I post about on Google+.
I’ve been wanting to run a course like this for a few years but have only recently found myself with the time to actually put something together. I’m really excited to be working with Rachael and Tony from Physiopedia, who I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with a few months ago.
I’m going to have two main roles during the next few weeks. I’m going to be participating along with everyone else and will post my reflections here, as well as try to comment on as many other blogs as possible. I’m also going to be acting as a facilitator of learning during the process. In that respect I’ll be writing posts that aim to scaffold your learning around the major course objectives. Note that these objectives are very broad and don’t aim to specifically direct your learning in any preconceived way. Think of them as signposts that you can use to evaluate your own progress. In fact, you should try to create your own learning objectives, which you can use to measure whether or not the course has been of value to you.
I’m going to be trying to post at least twice a week: one related to my own reflections as a participant, and one related to my role as a facilitator. One of the main things I’m going to be trying to do as a facilitator is to provide an overview of what I see happening in the course, and then make suggestions for improvement. These suggestions may be in the form of recommending a technological tool that could help you to filter the enormous amount of content that’s going to be generated, or it might be to point out additional resources related to learning. I’ll also be posting short comments on the course on Twitter, using the #pht402 hashtag (clicking on this link will open a new window in your browser showing the #pht402 Twitter stream). All of my blog posts will also appear in the Twitter stream, so that’s probably a good place to go and get an overview of what’s going on in the course.
Other than that, I’m really looking forward to following you all and having the opportunity to learn with you over the next few weeks.