This week’s blog comes from Teresa Atkinson, giving an early update from the Postgraduate module she leads on ‘Enabling environments for people with dementia’. Over to Teresa:
We have just welcomed 14 students onto our module. In these early days it’s great to get together in the Collaborate Seminars to find out more about each other and make new connections. This is a fully online module, so the Collaborate Seminars are where we meet ‘face to face’ every fortnight.
So, what sort of things do we get up to on our module? Well, I thought I would give you a little peep into what our students have been doing.
We have all sorts of activities on the module which can range from discussion boards on a particular topic, activities, videos, quizzes, reading and, of course, some tasks.
In the second week of the module the students were involved in exploring more about dementia. This sounds easy when you already work in the field, but there were plenty of new insights. In our Collaborate Seminar we explored some of the issues which arise when working with people living with dementia, such as confusion about reality. This sparked an interesting discussion with lots of great collaboration.
To start us thinking about the environment, the discussion board this week asked the question ‘What is an enabling environment?’ Our students come from all different disciplines so ‘environment’ can mean many different things to them, and to the people they work with. Some students work in a hospital environment, some are based in care homes and some are in a range of other settings which bring them into contact with people with dementia and their families.
There was some fantastic feedback on the discussion board and the themes are captured in this word cloud:
This took place when we were in week 2 of 12, and already the depth of discussion together with the level of engagement is so exciting. We are going to be learning a lot together on this journey which will feed into that ultimate goal of making a difference to the lives of those we support.
To find out more about joining us on one (or more!) of our Postgraduate modules in the future please visit our website.
Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow
Association for Dementia Studies Blog 
Do you involve us in the course? Martin
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Hi Martin, thanks for asking and I’m happy to say that the answer is yes we do.
The exact involvement of people living with dementia and their carers varies from module to module, but across our Postgraduate Certificate we do try to include people’s views and experiences. This tends to be through video lectures and clips, many of which have been created specifically for our modules. It has also included participation in live seminars, input to resources that we use on the modules, input to the research that underpins our teaching, and overseeing the quality of our modules.
However we can always do more, so every time we review our modules we do look for new opportunities to include people living with dementia and their carers. If you’ve got any suggestions please let us know.
Kind regards,
Jen (on behalf of the ADS team)
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