Learning for Involvement

Many of us who have become actively involved with health related research dislike the word 'training' as it seems to imply that we need to be taught something and moulded into behaving in a certain manner.

Learning (at our own pace, in our own time, at our own leisure in a manner that allows us to choose what we want to learn when we need to know) seems a much better description.


I am speaking, of course about Informing Healthcare Through Clinical Research and am going to be blogging here and tweeting @DerekCStewart with #IHTCR in the weeks running up to 6th June and during the weeks of the course.

This is a transformative, free, online course that means that I can find out about Clinical Research, think about many of the issues, understand some of the challenges and build my knowledge about what needs to happen to improve our health and wellbeing.

The first outing of the course had over 4000 people taking an active part with more than half staying with the course. Many members of the public joined in as well as people from throughout the world.

It is only fair to point out that I appear in the course, helped @kareninns1 to get the views of some patients and we both work at the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network. I am therefore biased yet thoroughly enthusiastic.I have also written previously in this blog about - It's a MOOC, take a Look.

For years, patients and the public, who become actively involved had to wait for any courses and other meetings to make sense of clinical research. 

The major shift here is that of control and autonomy - where we are given more choice and power to find out for ourselves. This is not training - it is learning.

I much prefer the term learning and am grateful to my colleague @emma_lowe for pointing me in the direction of Jane Hart. This approach to Modern Workforce Learning applies even more for the public trying to learn in research. 

Our approach has been to get people together to talk about research through the Building Research Partnerships programme which acts as an introductory session for the public to meet people working in research.  There is a nice video clip of BRP in action from NWC CRN and the course notes are now part of CRN’s National Learning Resources

This takes me very nicely to the excellent and extensive campaign #whywedoresearch and the TWEETFEST which took place during the week beginning Mon 16th May 2016. 

On 17th May 1230-1330 @kareninns1 and @DerekCStewart hosted a Tweetchat on the very topic of Learning and supporting involvement in research with #myresearchlearning

You can also find out more about the Patient Research Ambassadors Initiative (PRAI) with @SimonRStones in the evening between 2000-2100hrs. Find out more about PRAI on BrightTalk TV

All of this excitement led up to International Clinical Trials Day and the OKtoASK Facebook discussion Friday 20th May and...

     ...the relaunch of the MOOC 

           Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research.





Look out for more on learning in my next post and you might want to have a look at a recent webinar on the challenges and opportunities of involving the public that @AntimonyWray and I gave for research trainees.