ADHD online course - free, starting now. Anyone interested?

[chocolateygoo]

Hi,

Just wanted to highlight a course thats just starting on ADHD, might be of interest to you all. I'm doing this in my role as a childminder wanting to be better able to care for children with ADHD symptoms.

Its run via Coursera, the link is here: www.coursera.org/course/adhd (or google Coursera, then search for ADHD).

Basically, if you haven't come across this yet, the new 'cool thing' is for universities to offer undergraduate level courses free of charge over the internet. The phenomena is known as MOOCs if you're geeky enough to research it. Universities get publicity and reach a huge audience, typically in the order of 20,000+ students globally take each course. You get completely free training. Some courses offer a certificate at the end and varying amounts of coursework to earn it. For this one on ADHD, there's a weekly quiz that you have to score more than 90% on average in to get the certificate (you can refer to your notes and the internet though when answering it!). Or you can just watch the lectures and take what you want to from them, with no obligation.

The ADHD one looks pretty good so far, its American so the diagnosis criteria and treatment may be slightly different, but still should be relevant. I'm certain quite a lot of it is going to go over my head, but hoping to end up much more well-informed by the end of it.

Hope some of you will join me in taking it and post below what you think!

It actually looks interesting, from a morbid curiosity about what they have to say point of view, but I'm wondering if my not-so-broadband would cope with all those half hour videos. I can't even watch vimeo videos without my browser hanging.

ouryve my internet is rubbish too, but you can download the videos if it doesn't run smoothly and then watch when its all done.

I found the first lecture most interesting in terms of the data on prevalence (10% of all males - that's a lot!) and also on the range of symptoms - e.g. inattention and dreaminess, which I hadn't thought of as being part of ADHD.

Hoping not to be insensitive to anyone who is experiencing ADHD first hand, I just want to know more about it as I'd like to be able to provide better SEN care in my business.

The other options look fun too. Going to ask moondog if this one is a sort-of ABA

I am curious but its too late to look now. Read first page link and it does look interesting...

coff - you can still sign up and watch yesterday's lecture as a recording.

DS doesn't have adhd but it's more interesting than housework .

Oooh - in that case, I'm very tempted.

DS1's profile came up as predominantly hyperactive at home and oppositional at school

Who has done this, then?

It turns out that the 40 minute video only takes 4 minutes to download, even on my crappy connection

I must admit, I really wanted to interrupt and ask some probing questions, particularly about some of the stats. Surely, 4.4% prevalence in adults does not mean that only 4.4% of adults in the US have it. I'm sure that very few people my age have a diagnosis, whether they would warrant one or not.

The focus on DSM IV is interesting, too. Criteria are clearly a little different, here, and don't preclude ASD, but diagnosis rates are considerably lower. (Plus, I argued with one of the multi choice questions about the effects of DSM V)

I might be a med school drop out, rather than a qualified clinician, but I'm still a scientist and not keen on being fed glossed over interpretations of data as facts.

Oh yes, and other things I wanted to query:

The exclusion of ODD. I get the feeling that here, it's considered to be more on a "spectrum" with ADHD (and probably is symptomatic of the overlap of ADHD with ASD and particularly PDA)

The example of the 50 year old woman. She was becoming forgetful. Again, being read to from some crib notes frustrated me (not to mention the fact that i was struggling not to zone out by this point!!!) I would have liked some discussion. Were they sure this woman had ADHD and was early onset dementia ruled out?

Yes, I used to be the gobby one who asked lots of questions in lectures.

my boss made me sign up for a course on courser that sounded relvant to my job - the good thing is that providing you sign up in time - you can still watch the videos and see the discussions for weeks after the course has ended - so you don't need to be able to keep up with it at the time (unless of cours you want to get th certificate at the end to say you successfully completd th course)
hope you get th drift the e key on this keyboard is not v good and it has reached the time of night when I can't b bothred to keep banging it till it works. soz

here's another behaviour one www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon