Open training course for an international audience

Di Matteo Mancini

CREMIT – the Research Centre on Media Education, Innovation and Technology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – has long been committed to developing free, open online training grounded in its own research. Three of its MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – are now available in languages other than Italian, reaching teachers, educators, healthcare professionals, and media practitioners with no barriers to entry. All courses are hosted on the EduOpen platform, are fully self-paced – no tutor, no deadlines – and award a free certificate of participation from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore upon completion.

Pallium – Towards a Culture of Palliative Care

Italian │ French ┃ 5 modules │ 25 hours │ 8 weeks ┃ Healthcare staff, psychologists, volunteers, caregivers and families

Pallium is a distinctive entry in CREMIT’s MOOC catalogue: it does not focus on media education in the traditional sense, but reflects the Centre’s capacity to design training in areas where technology meets human fragility. The course is one of the outcomes of the project “Pallium – Caring for and Improving the Quality of Life of Terminal Patients and their Families”, funded under the Interreg V-A Italy-Switzerland cross-border cooperation programme. The project was led by Cooperativa La Bitta (Italy) and the Hôpital du Valais – Centre Hospitalier du Valais Romand (Switzerland), with ASL VCO, Fondazione Comunitaria del VCO and Emisfera Società Cooperativa as partners. The MOOC was designed and produced by CREMIT.

The course is grounded in the concept of Community Technologies (Rivoltella, 2017), which frames technologies not as neutral tools but as resources embedded in relational processes that support people’s competences within community contexts. A parallel output of the project is a caregiver app developed through participatory design.

All content is available in Italian and French, selectable at the start of the course – a bilingual design that reflects the cross-border nature of the project and the dialogue between two distinct healthcare systems and professional cultures.

Course modules

• Module 1 – Palliative care. Principles and history of palliative care in Italy and Switzerland: what palliative care is, what it is not, and when it should be activated.
• Module 2 – The Canton Valais model. The Swiss approach to palliative care, an advanced reference point for comparison with the Italian model.
• Module 3 – Spiritual care: concepts and methods. The spiritual dimension of patient needs: conceptual and practical tools often overlooked in standard healthcare training.
• Module 4 – The role of volunteering. The relational and operational significance of volunteering within the care network, in relation to both patients and families.
• Module 5 – The role of technology: towards the “Pallium” app. From an analysis of existing technological solutions in palliative care to the development of the caregiver app.

Each module includes video lessons and thematic resources. To receive the certificate, participants must pass each module’s test (minimum score 6/10, three attempts allowed) and complete a final questionnaire.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will have gained knowledge of:

• palliative care through the Italian (VCO) and Swiss (Canton Valais) models, including their respective strengths and approaches;
• the full range of patient needs in palliative care, including spiritual and relational dimensions;
• the role of volunteering in the care network and its relationship with patients and families;
• the contribution that technology can make in palliative care contexts, from existing tools to newly designed digital resources.

The teaching team brings together Italian and Swiss professionals: Serena Triacca, Simona Ferrari, Martina Morreale, Francesca Oliva, Susanna Brumana, Rosella Tolini, Linda Lombi (Italy); Patrick Müller, Isabelle Beytrison, Camilla Tappa, Angela Filomeno, and Luigi Stanco (Switzerland).

Enrol now: learn.eduopen

Project information: Pallium

How to access the courses

All three courses are free and available on the EduOpen platform. Simply create a personal account and enrol in your chosen course: all modules are immediately accessible, with no deadlines to meet. Upon passing each module’s test, participants can download their certificate of participation from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence (BY-NC-SA).

We look forward to seeing you on EduOpen.

Further reading

This article is part of the CREMIT MOOCs Beyond Borders series. Discover the other open training courses available in the same collection:

• YO-MEDIA – Youngsters’ Media Literacy in Times of Crisis
• Check & Design – Digital Information Literacy and Collaborative Learning at School

All articles are published in the International MOOC section of the CREMIT website.