Course Overview

Delivery Format

This course is designed to be a fully online MOOC-type course. Course content such as the fundamental concepts will be offered as open educational resources for the Asia-Pacific region. It will follow a format similar to mainstream MOOCs on EdX or Coursera, which typically include presentations, mini-videos, self tests, reflective questions, graded assessments, and moderated discussions on a weekly basis while the course is running.

Students will learn through scheduled instructor-facilitated sessions and discussions and will actively engage with instructors, teaching assistants and their peers to complete all graded assignments to earn the certificate. Your critical thinking skills will be enhanced through the peer assessment of the six sentence argument exercises, when you will be required to grade the work of other students taking the course. Course completion certificates will be issued after students successfully pass the course. Students can access all course materials (except the textbook and readings), presentations, videos, assignments, and tutorials online through the UBC Canvas system.

This course introduces concepts and skills through presentations, videos, assignments and tutorials. A mandatory field course will be introduced in the future. You will be expected to read material to supplement the information provided in the presentations. Most of this is online, but some will require access to a library. We have provided many online links that will enable you to follow up particular topics online and, if you use these, then accessing the textbook material will be less essential. We have also provided a large number of references – partly to support the arguments presented in the course and partly to enable you to follow up particular areas that may be of interest.

One thing that may surprise you is the general lack of graphs and diagrams. This is the result of the academic publishing system, whereby academic publishers charge often considerable amounts to have a figure or graph reproduced. We have been restricted to using open access materials, and these currently are very limited.

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