Courses with a global difference

Local initiatives are having worldwide impacts, writes Anthony Stavrinos.

Last month's freak storms caused up to $400 million in damage to coastal NSW, and Australian academics are analysing such events to help communities cope better with natural disasters in the future.

Southern Cross University, on the advice of the United Nations, has developed a master of community development (emergency management) course, a full-fee paying, online study program based on a UN imperative to provide training for communities to work to reduce the effects of disasters.

It's one of several innovative courses across NSW with increased flexibility to better support students' transition to the workforce, and offers distance learning through online technologies, providing accessibility to students worldwide.

Dr Jean Griffiths, head of SCU's school of arts and social sciences, says the UN favoured a community development focus in emergency management courses that focused more on logistical, response-based strategies or medical and health aspects.

"The community development focus is actually getting people to work with communities in an educative way and building at the grassroots level of communities so they're aware of their threats, of the risks that they encounter," Griffiths says. "And how you get them to solve some of those problems or provide solutions that will reduce effects when something does happen."

Recent natural disasters, such as the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and the lessons of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, have shaped the globally unique program.

"When the tsunami hit at the end of 2004, we had everything for the start of the next trimester in January ready to go, but I had to go back in and change a whole lot of stuff," Griffiths says. "For the course to be relevant, we then focused all the assessment on what was happening, because it evolved."

She believes online delivery of the course allows people around the world, already working in the field, to expand and refine skills and knowledge and communicate more effectively.
The course's first graduate, a Frenchman, worked in Guatemala for the UN High Commission for Refugees, speaking Spanish as well as his native tongue and "wrote English in colloquial Australian".

"I was able to watch online - I never met him - the dialogue between this guy in Guatemala and a senior sergeant in the police force in Queensland," she recalls. "They were talking to eachother about their lives, what they saw outside [the course] , what they were doing - just an ordinary chat you'd have with a fellow student in a cafe. And they were doing this in cyberspace."

At the University of Sydney, a master of health science (sexual health) is also being offered exclusively online, attracting students from around the world.

Course deputy co-ordinator Dr Gomathi Sitharthan says there was previously no global sexual health program available. "We've got students from South Africa, Canada, USA and around the world doing this particular program," she says. "This was one of the first programs of its kind, which gave them a flexible pathway for professionals to extend their expertise in the specialist area of sexual health."

The University of New England has just launched a new flexible nursing course that it claims will revolutionise the way undergraduate nursing courses are structured in Australia.

UNE has a two-stage curriculum, allowing students to choose their preferred length of course and type of nursing career.

"A candidate can become a practising nurse in either two years or three years, whichever they prefer," lecturer Angie Smith says. "We believe this structure is unique in Australia."

The course, which was designed to address the nursing shortage and to meet the flexibility needs of learners, is a bonus for first-year student Katherine Ivey, 20, providing greater certainty she will successfully complete her studies.

"I've always kind of known that I wanted to be a nurse," Ivey says. "[The course] is actually quite well set out. I find that although the workload is substantial, it's not draining and is manageable."

Published: 02 July 2007