Tuesday 12 August 2014

Reporting MOOC: Spreading the Animal Welfare Message


The summer is flying by and we are now in the final week of our MOOC course - and it's been a fantastic 5 weeks.  What has inspired  the teaching team here is the enthusiasm, engagement and input by the students themselves. In fact we  have had lots of students telling us they’ve changed their behaviours due to the course. 

 
You can read a few of their quotes here:

"Week through week I got more concerned on how I could make the animals life a bit better and after watching the videos on week 3, I decided to engage actively by volunteering in an animal shelter."



"I have found that knowing I will be able to define "animal welfare" by measurable factors has helped tremendously.  Especially seeing specifically defined factors that let a shelter know it is providing a good environment for the animals in its care, and being able to pinpoint areas of improvement NOT based on emotion or opinion, but on scientifically defined points".

 

"This course has helped me to coalesce a lot of ideas that have been rolling around in my head for a while.  Particularly that the Five Freedoms allows us to use the same framework to talk about companion animals, production animals and wildlife.  Our group focuses mostly on pet overpopulation and education.  We are about to launch an anti-cruelty campaign and the Five Freedoms is a going to be the way we talk about cruelty".



"I have been inspired by the scientific approach to a  very emotional/personal issue and I really appreciate the scientific and rationale evidence to support these issues.  I love the spirit and energy of the scientists who have led us through this course and I really appreciate their attempts to keep the conversation balanced.  I have learned so much, and I believe this has already impacted my treatment and approach to all the animals in my life".

 
 
You can  read more here if you are already  registered:
https://class.coursera.org/animal-001/forum/thread?thread_id=371
 

We've had 32,000 people signed up from across 160 countries.  If you would like to be part of this, we will be running the course again, and you can sign up here for future alerts:
 


Tweet: @JMICAWE


Don't forget we will also have  options in Mandarin and Spanish!






 

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