EDUC 816: Week One

Hello HEAL Team,

A couple of you have sent me quick notes with a few words about yourselves and your anticipations for EDUC 816; these messages were unexpected but I very much appreciated reading them. So if you have been thinking about writing to me before we meet on Friday, feel free to do so — although this is obviously not a requirement. I look forward to meeting everyone in person very soon.

I would like our first weekend to be an active exploration of how our current and future roles in health education involve program design and development; what 'good' (effective, fun, memorable, …) programs look like; and how we can learn, share, inspire one another, and build capacity in this domain together. If you have been able to start reading our main text (and especially if you have ventured beyond the first chapter), chances are that you are remembering programs/interventions in which you were a learner, others that you and others crafted, and perhaps yet others that you ended up being responsible for implementing, evaluating, or administering. As you think of these programs (however you define 'program'), begin to reflect on the things, people (both roles and specific individuals) and other factors that (must) have gone into their planning and evolution — and how each of these has likely affected the end result.

In our course, we will address a spectrum of considerations from health promoting behaviours to theories and models of behaviour change to developmental evaluation to community capacity building. But I would like us to start with a conversation on good design as well as the 'fit' of our endeavours for particular contexts. Yes, that includes giving a careful consideration to where health interventions are needed and/or where they can bring value; who can benefit from them and in what ways — and how we can tell; what success looks like to different people; to what extent successes are replicable in other contexts; etc. etc.

Since this will be our first weekend together, I intentionally limited your assigned readings to a minimum. That being said, if, once you have spent the time outdoors enjoying the long-awaited (by some, anyway) snow, you are ready to bundle up in front of a fireplace and reach for some good reading, here it comes: Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things". The cool thing is that the SFU Library provides online access to the full text of Norman's book. So if you have a chance, read the first chapter — it may inspire our class discussion on Saturday. (N.B. My apologies if you find that you do not want to put the book down after the first chapter …)

Happy reading, and talk soon!

Michal