Volunteer Orientation Course

We are not yet sure when the next course will run but you can sign up here for the next one.

Please register your interest here.

Course Type - Open, Online
Course Reference - PP02
Course Co-ordinators - Rachael Lowe
Institution - Physiopedia
About this course - This online course is an orientation course for Physiopedia volunteers.
Who can take part- Physiotherapists and Physical therapists and students of these professions. 
Date of next course - 2 March 2015
Time commitment - 12 hours over 4 weeks
Requirements - You will complete online learning activities, engage with additional resources, take part in the conversation online and complete the course evaluation.
Assessment - There will be a final activity report to submit
Awards - Completion certificate from Physiopedia plus a Yellow Belt Volunteer Badge!

Course Pages

• Pre-Course Activities
• Course Activities

Aim

The aim of this course is to prepare people for their volunteer roles on the Physiopedia team.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students should be:

1. Familiar with the many varied aspects of the Physiopedia project.
2. Confident to edit Physiopedia.
3. Familiar with the Physiopedia quality standards.
4. Have an idea of what role they would like to play in the Physiopedia project.
5. Develop key professional skills such as digital skills, social media skills and professionalism.

Intended audience

This course is suitable for any Physiotherapist/Physical Therapist or Physiotherapy/Physical Therapy student who would like to contribute to the Physiopedia project as a volunteer.

Find out more about volunteering with Physiopedia.

Course structure

Participants will be given 3 tasks each week, namely:

1. Complete between 2 and 5 learning activities each week
2. Look at additional readings, videos and resources
3. Contribute to an online discussion run through the Physiopedia volunteers Facebook group

You will also be actively encouraged to share your course activities and reflections through your own social media platforms.

Time commitment

This course is 4 weeks long.  Participants will be required to devote a minimum of 3 hours per week to the course.

Pre-requisites

Participants on this course must be:

1. A Physiotherapist/Physical Therapist or Physiotherapy/Physical Therapy student.
2. Intending to take on a volunteer role within the Physiopedia project on completion of the course.
3. Willing to edit Physiopedia.

Forum for online discussion

The online discussion will be an important aspect of this course and participants will be expected to post at least one comment each week.

The online discussion will take place within a closed Physiopedia Volunteers Facebook group.

Only participants of the course and our current team of volunteers will be able to post and read discussions within this group. Participants will not be required to share their private facebook pages with other course participants, they will however need to have an account with facebook. 

Language

The course will be run in English although participants will only require basic English skills. Participants will be encouraged to be respectful and empathetic to those for whom English is not their first language.

Accreditation, Assessment and Certification

On the successful completion of this course (assessed by the course co-ordinator) each participant will be provided with a certificate of completion from Physiopedia plus a Yellow Belt badge.  These will be awarded provided you have:

1. Completed your Physiopedia profile page.
2. Quality assessed 3 pages within Physiopedia.
3. Created your own new Physiopedia page.
4. Submit a piece of work in relation to your desired volunteer role.
5. Contributed to the online facebook discussion each week.
   
6. Completed your volunteer orientation activity report.

On completion of the course and once your ongoing role has been agreed you will also be offered:

• FREE membership to the Physiopedia members area
  

People involved in this course

Course co-ordinators

The course co-ordinator for this course is Physiopedia co-founder and director Rachael Lowe

Course facilitators

Physiopedia volunteers Wendy Walker and Scott Buxton will facilitate the running of this course.

Course Contacts

Throughout this course you should email us if you have any problems at all. We would prefer that you let us know about problems or difficulties that you have encountered so that we can amend the guidance documents or create help videos and provide feedback and training where appropriate.

Contact course co-ordinator

Resources

You might find these resources useful throughout the course:

• Volunteer
• Volunteers
• Volunteer Roles
• User Help Tutorials
• MediaWiki (this is the software that Physiopedia uses - the same as Wikipedia)
• Wikitext examples (This is the code that is written on the Physiopedia pages)