Abstract:

Health and education are amongst the most important social and economic resources in contemporary Europe as in the rest of the world, and both are facing very substantial transformation process. Accordingly, the current healthcare education system is coping with a wide-spectrum of challenges, the most notable of which being the inclusion of the ever increasing skill and training requirements for healthcare graduates as well as innovation in many fields.

What is more, the Bologna Process has brought about a series of important reforms in Higher Education, having initiated processes aiming significant harmonisation in recognition, course structure and quality assurance to name but a few examples. An even cursory look at the instruments created by Bologna process shows an emphasis on flexible learning pathways, recognition of prior learning, widening access to second cycle studies and a host of other instruments aimed at doing quite the opposite of the negative perceptions of the process.

With this in mind, WebWise brings together a range of European higher education institutions active in the field of public health education as well as experts for innovating e-learning, to analyse, experiment and develop innovative learning scenarios within public health education.

The approach of WEBWISE is to focus analysis and the introduction of pedagogic innovation in public health education and training by undertaking research at four related levels within each of the participating countries: national level, institutional level, programme or course level, and learning scenario level.

At each of these levels, we intend to examine two principal dimensions of learning. First, we shall review the typical learning pathways involved, through which learners access, or are required to follow in order to participate in, public health training for professional or university qualification. Secondly, we will explore the characteristic interactions with learners involved.

The general objective of WEBWISE is to improve the efficiency and accessibility of Higher Education provision in the field of (especially ) public health, through specific innovations in provision utilizing the structural tools provided by the Bologna Process and methodological tools provided through Web 2.0 collaborative Learning Scenarios.

Within this objective, the project will aim to:
• Identify typical learning pathways, interactions, pedagogies and learning designs within public health education;
• Report, suggest and test a number of innovations based on Web 2.0 pedagogies aimed at improving the learning process within these pathways;
• Identify and elaborate the key improvements made to systems in a series of pilot studies and their specific source;
• Recommend how such improvements may be reproduced in public health education, and possibly be extrapolated to other areas of Higher Education provision
• Formulate these as general recommendations and bring them to the attention of European and National decision/policy makers.

The presentation will focus on the methodological work and the study design which will be piloted in the winter term 2011/12.

Keywords:

Public health, learning scenario, web2.0, higher education.