What's The Impact of a MOOC?

Our Animal Behaviour and Welfare MOOC has been running in it's new 'on-demand' format for a little under a week now and a whole new set of students are getting a chance to learn about animal behaviour and welfare, but does that learning actually make a difference?

We were lucky enough today to be visited by one of our MOOC students, Hilda Hermann. Hilda is the Project Coordinator for Outreach KZN, an animal sterilisation and vaccination project in South Africa. In the three and a half years that Hilda has been working with the project, they've sterilised over 27 000 animals.

Many of the staff at Outreach KZN took part in the MOOC and Hilda gave us lots of valuable feedback about what worked in the course, what was difficult, and what people would like to see more of.

But our favourite part was hearing how useful the staff found the MOOC. Working in rural parts of South Africa it can be difficult finding educational resources that fit into busy working lives and schedules, and we think the new on-demand MOOC will be an even greater help in getting the animal welfare message out there at a time and in a format that suits learners.

We also loved this picture of the animal care staff at Outreach KZN with their certificates - it certainly made our week hearing about the impact the course has had!

If you'd like to take the course you can sign up via Coursera by clicking here. You can share your stories about the MOOC in the comments, or on Twitter by tweeting us @JMICAWE or using the #EdAniWelf hashtag.