Lead School - Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies

The Dog and Cat MOOC will be an On-Demand course divided into five topics, covering the history, behavioural ecology, behaviour and physiology, behaviour management methods, welfare issues , dealing with problem pets and the use of dogs and cats for therapy. It will also incorporate a novel ‘Science You Can Try’ theme with videos demonstrating safe and welfare-friendly practical demonstrations of animal science, some of which can be conducted at home to enable viewers to learn more about animal behaviour and welfare ( eg slow blinking cats and Yawning dogs).

The MOOCs topics are relatively self-contained to accommodate for the casual learners who do not wish to achieve a certificate, but still want to access materials (MacKay et al, 2015). This has long been an issue for Coursera (https://class.coursera.org/mooc/forum/thread?thread_id=234) and we believe that designing an On-Demand course in self-contained units will appeal to the broader audience of ‘just auditing’ students, as well as providing a certificate-based achievement system for the completionists.