Course Spotlight: Integrated Health 428

October 18, 2010

I’d like to share a little about how we’ve been using the book in my class, Inter-HE 428: Program Planning in Family and Consumer Education, because it’s been an exciting and somewhat unexpected experience. This course is about educational program planning for students who will work in various formal and informal educational settings (some will be K-12 teachers, but many of them are Nonprofit and Community Leadership majors), and is taught online.

For each lesson, they participate in a Discussion Forum online and I’ve used the book to connect and apply key course concepts to aspects and themes of the book. So far in the course, students have discussed:

1. the examples of formal and informal education present in the book,

2. the various roles as learners and educators individuals in the book take on,

3. models of educational program planning that may be applied to patient/research participant education in health and science, and building from that discussion,

4. the core program content that would be important to such patient/research participant education.
The students really enjoy the book and see the story and the Go Big Read program itself as good examples of the potential of less formal educational approaches to generate powerful learning.

Amy Hilgendorf
Doctoral Candidate and Instructor
School of Human Ecology