Protecting Children in Humanitarian Settings
The Protecting Children in Humanitarian Settings online course explores how we can promote the well-being and protection of children in humanitarian settings.
You will engage with the latest evidence on childhood adversity from a variety of disciplines and will explore how public health approaches can be used to promote the well-being of children in humanitarian settings. For those of you who work in the field of humanitarian child protection, you will engage in critical thought about current practice, identifying opportunities for incorporating the latest evidence and transforming practice.
This course is aimed at child protection practitioners who work internationally in humanitarian settings, but is also designed for those who want to learn more about, or start working in the sector.
WHAT YOUR WILL LEARN
- How humanitarian crises can affect children’s well-being and development
- What a public health approach to child protection entails and why a focus on prevention is important
- What risk and resilience mean in the context of child development and child protection and what factors influence these at the individual, family, community and societal levels
- How the agency, relationships, and resilience of children, families and communities can be strengthened during and after humanitarian crises
- How to think critically about different approaches to child protection in humanitarian crises
ABOUT THE COURSE
Protection of Children in Humanitarian Settings is an online self-paced course* consisting of seven sections. Each section includes the following items:
- Video lectures and guest speakers on section topics
- Graded learning activities, including reflection activities, discussion prompts, and a final exam.
- Questions checking your understanding of course content.
* What is a self-paced course? According to the edX Learner's Guide (link opens in new window), "Self-paced courses do not follow a set schedule. Course materials do not become available according to a schedule, but are completely available as soon as the course begins. Assignments and exams do not have start or due dates. The course shows indicators for graded assignments, but not due dates."
EdX offers a Demo Course so that new edX users can familiarize themselves with the course environment.
COURSE OUTLINE
- Welcome to the Course
- Getting to Know Each Other
- How to Take This Course
- (Optional) Introduction to Humanitarian Child Protection
- Child Development, Adversity, and Resilience
- Child Development
- Childhood Adversity
- Resilience in Children
- Relating the Science to Child Protection
- Unlocking the Protective Potential of Social Environments
- Supporting Children's Agency
- Working with Children in Different Cultural Contexts
- Children's Agency and Participation
- Fostering Child Agency
- DO NO HARM
- Enabling Families as Protective Environments
- Families in Different Cultural Contexts
- Impact of Humanitarian Crises on Families
- Interventions to Support Families During and After Crises
- ‘Do No Harm’ Issues
- Enabling Communities as Protective Environments
- Communities As Resources and Risks for Children
- Ways of Engaging with Communities
- How Community Approaches Can Support Child Protection in Education
- Enabling Protective Social Norms and Policies
- Social Norms
- Approaches to Social Norms Change
- Children's Policies
- Approaches to Changing Policy
- Enriching and Transforming Practice
- Bringing Together the Science of Childhood Adversity and Child Protection Practice
- Identifying Barriers to Transformation
- Identifying Opportunities for Transformation
AUDITING AND VERIFIED TRACKS
Learners auditing the course will have access to all course materials except graded assignments for the expected length of the course (See course About Page). After this period, you must sign up for a verified certificate to access the course material. As always, financial assistance will be accessible for learners who need it.
If you are in the Verified Certificate track you have access to all graded assignments and access to the course while available. You need to obtain a grade of 70% or greater to receive the certificate. A Request Certificate option will appear on the course Progress page after completing the course. When you click Request Certificate, your certificate is generated and a link to view or download the certificate will become available.
COURSE ACTIVITIES AND GRADING
Pre- and post-course survey: The course begins with a pre-course survey and ends with a post-course survey to track your learning journey. These ungraded surveys will help you identify what you learned and what areas you might want to explore further in future. They are also an excellent opportunity to provide course staff with information for improving the course. (Ungraded)
Self-Checks: Short ungraded assessments provided throughout the course to help you test your understanding and make the concept stick in your mind to support later retrieval and eventually transfer to your own practice. (Ungraded)
Discussion Prompts: Discussion prompts give you an opportunity to discuss key ideas with peers. There are eight in total. Please review the edX help file, Participating in Course Discussions, prior to engaging in the discussions. (Graded : 10% - via learner's attestation; 6 of 8 count toward grade.) (See also, Discussion Forum Guidelines, below)
Self-reflections: Throughout the course you will be asked to reflect on the ways in which the concepts and issues discussed relate to your own work and experience. This will be done through self-reflection prompts (10). Your reflections will not be evaluated by staff or shared with other course participants, but they form a core requirement of the course, and you get points for completing them. You are encouraged to keep a physical or digital journal of your self-reflections. After completing all prompts, you will have an opportunity to complete a final activity using the content from your reflections to create a custom plan for implementing the ideas from your practice. (Graded : 10% - via learner's attestation; 10 of 10 count toward grade.)
Action Plan: An exercise which brings together the different areas covered in the course and asks you to reflect on your own current practice. The action plan rubric is outlined below in the Self-Assessment Rubric for Action Plan section of this syllabus below. (Graded: 30%)
Final Exam: A final exam designed to help you check your level of understanding of the material covered in the section. (Graded: 50%)
Action Plan Rubric
| Description | 3 Reflective Practitioner | 2 Aware Practitioner | 1 Reflective Novice | 0 Unreflective Practitioner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relevance | The learning experience being reflected upon demonstrates strong and clear relevance to the four course themes: agency, context, relationships and prevention. | The learning experience being reflected upon is clearly relevant to the four course themes: agency, context, relationships and prevention. | Attempts are made to demonstrate how the learning experience is relevant to the four course themes (agency, context, relationships and prevention), but the relevance is unclear. | Most of the reflection is irrelevant to the four course themes: agency, context, relationships and prevention. |
| Analysis | The reflection moves beyond simple description of the experience to an analysis of how the experience contributed to student understanding of self, others, and/or course concepts. | Student makes attempts at applying the learning experience to understanding of self, others, and/or course concepts but fails to demonstrate depth of analysis. | The reflection demonstrates student attempts to analyze the experience but analysis lacks depth. | Reflection does not move beyond description of the learning experience(s). |
| Interconnections | The reflection demonstrates strong and clear connections between the course material; past personal experiences; and personal goals. | The reflection demonstrates significant connections between the course material; past personal experiences; and personal goals. | There is little to no attempt to demonstrate connections between the learning experience and previous other personal and/or learning experiences. | No attempt to demonstrate connections to previous learning or experience. |
| Self-criticism | The reflection demonstrates ability of the student to question their own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions, and/or assumptions and define new modes of thinking as a result. | The reflection demonstrates ability of the student to question their own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions. | There is some attempt at self-criticism, but the self-reflection fails to demonstrate a new awareness of personal biases, etc. | Not attempt at self-criticism. |
DISCUSSION FORUM GUIDELINES
Discussion is an effective way to explore the ideas of this course with peers. In the spirit of keeping conversation supportive and enriching we ask that you take a moment to review the following discussion forum guidelines:
- Be respectful. Please respect your fellow students. The diversity of your peers as well as where they teach will make for interesting discussions but only when done in a polite and respectful manner. Insulting, condescending or abusive words will not be tolerated and will be reported and removed.
- Be constructive. Look for ways to support the ideas of your peers and make suggestions for related resources that may help.
- Be sensitive. This is a global forum with participants from many different cultures and backgrounds. Be sensitive when discussing race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or controversial topics since others may be more sensitive about them than you are.
- Post appropriately. Content that violates the Terms of Service is not permitted. You may not post inappropriate or copyrighted content, advertisements or promotions of outside products or organizations, or spam the forums with repetitive content.
In addition, please consider the following guidelines when posting in the course forums.
POSTING GUIDELINES
- Read before posting. Your comment or question should build on what’s already been discussed. If you have a question, scan through to see if it’s already been addressed and use the search function to avoid creating duplicate threads and find the most appropriate topic thread to post in.
- Use informative titles. Keep your post titles short and on-topic so the forums are easier to navigate. If you’re asking a question, it should go in the title.
- Make it easy to read. Present facts and background information in your post. Don’t capitalize or bold entire sentences as this makes the forums harder to read. Check your posts for spelling or grammatical errors.
- Stay on topic. Don’t change the topic of a thread or split a thread into multiple discussions. If you are discussing something that is not directly related to the course materials, pick one thread instead of discussing over multiple threads. And please, don’t post the same post/question in more than one forum.
- Help keep the site friendly. If you think a comment is inappropriate, please click “Report” to let us know about it.
Based on “Forum Guidelines” from AMS.URB.1x Sustainable Urban Development