Educator spotlight: raising awareness of everyday ethics in care

The University of Surrey recently joined FutureLearn and this January they launched their first two MOOCs, on Communicating with Diverse Audiences and Ethical Decision-Making in Care. Both courses previously ran as private courses for small cohorts of invited learners and we reached out to Ann Gallagher, Professor of Ethics and Care and lead educator on the Ethical Decision-Making in Care course, to ask about her experience of creating a FutureLearn course, facilitating the private run and her ambitions for the open run, which has been CPD-certified.

“Creating the course, with the support of FutureLearn and colleagues in the University of Surrey Technology Enhanced Learning team, has been a very positive experience. It has been a privilege also to work with ethics experts, and with people who both receive and give care, who gave so generously of their time and experience.

During the private run of the course, it was wonderful to witness such a high level of engagement with course participants from Brunei to Brazil, from Kenya to Japan and from the United States to the United Kingdom.  Comments from participants in the private run were very positive with many commenting on the flexibility and accessibility of the course and the opportunity to engage with people in different cultural contexts and with different perspectives on ethics and care. The value and quality of such cross-cultural sharing of experiences and ideas, relating to ethics and care, surpassed my expectations and I look forward to this engagement continuing in future runs of the course.

I very much look forward to the open run of the course and to engaging with, and learning from, participants with different areas of experience and expertise in different parts of our global community. We have tweaked the course, based on feedback from the first run, and think these tweaks will greatly enhance participants’ experiences. I so look forward to the next run of the course and to joining in the discussions. I hope too that our course ‘Ethical decision-making in Care’ will enable reflection on ethical aspects of care and, ultimately, contribute to improvements in care practices in different cultural contexts. I look forward to joining the conversations in 2020”.