Shine a Light Here, Dig Deeper Over There

Abstract

There are numerous teaching and learning challenges in designing a fully online graduate program in bioethics. In order to ensure student success in any type of online graduate program, courses should be designed so that content is well organized and leads to enduring understanding of essential content. Student understanding in the online environment is uniquely dependent on clear communication of expectations. Content needs to be “chunked” into manageable components and organized so that learning builds throughout a course and program. Finally, online programs need to be humanized so that students are engaged in the course content and with peers and the faculty. One way to humanize online bioethics courses is to consistently integrate the health humanities such as poetry, literature, drama, and film as a means to highlight bioethics content in novel ways or encourage deeper exploration. This chapter describes program and course design for the online environment and uses a specific bioethics program to contextualize how the health humanities are woven through a graduate program. The chapter also provides specific examples of teaching and learning strategies in a clinical bioethics course that incorporates the health humanities. The chapter concludes with a description of emerging findings and broader significance for integrating the health humanities in bioethics education.