Designing for quality: The understanding dementia MOOC

The Introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a vehicle for education delivery presents opportunities and challenges. In the context of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre (Wicking Centre), the driver to develop a MOOC was the promise of addressing the internatio~al ~eficit in_ evidence- based dementia education, as well as the lack of research into international erspectives on dementia. The Wicking Centre's activity integrates research and ~ducatlon framed by the concept of 'quality of life across the trajectory of dementia.' With dementia emerging as the public health issue of the 21st cent_ury, la~k of dementia education at multiple levels, professional and non-profess1on~I, is of increasing concern. The disruptive character of MOOCs, w_ith associa~ed risks an~ uncertainties, warranted the application of a research-oriented ~roiect ~anage ment approach to development. This included investing resources in gath.ering and analysing data to underpin each phase of decision-making. We used a de~1gn-ba~e~ research approach incorporating the concept of 'l.ife-cycle of an e-learning de.sign (Phillips et al. 2012). Data collection and analysis focused on three dy~am1cally interacting components: 1) expertise in dementia knowledge and dementia education; 2) a cohort-centric approach to design and delivery, an~ 3) models and designs for MOOCs currently promoted, discussed and reporte~ 1n the higher ed~cation discipline. Laurillard's Conversational Framework, relating types of learning, teaching-learning activities and the digital technologies that sup~ort them (2012), informed the selection of digital technology elements fo~ ~ass1v~-scale engagement of our identified cohort. The paper describes the lmt1~I design pr~cess and the outcomes of the limited release pilot that informed the first full offering of the MOOC.