Palliative care researchers at Flinders University hope to get more people talking about death and dying when they repeat the Dying2Learn MOOC in April.

This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aims to build greater awareness about death, dying, and palliative care and to get Australians thinking about what shapes their views around death and willingness to talk about it.

“If as a community we avoid talking about death, it makes it much harder for people when they have to deal with the realities of death and dying in their family, their workplace or their community,” said Associate Professor Jennifer Tieman, CareSearch Director and a Flinders University researcher.

“The MOOC will explore different aspects of death including the language we use, and how films and TV shows and the digital world shape our understanding.

“We’ll also be looking at what people actually die of and what role medicine plays. We hope the MOOC will help the community start to accept death as a normal part of life.”

The course was run for the first time in 2016 and more than 1,000 Australians joined the conversation.

One of those participants was Catherine Munro, a nurse from NSW.

She said she learnt so much from the course that she was disappointed when it ended.

“I’ve shared information about the MOOC with lots of people both at work and in my personal life and mostly get positive responses and a sense of disappointment that they missed it,” said Catherine.

Those who missed the course the first time round have another chance to participate.

The course is free and anyone with access to the internet can get involved. It runs for five weeks starting on Monday 3 April 2017.  Some of the topics that will be covered include:

• Thinking about the language we use when talking about dying
• Understanding changing approaches to funerals and memorialisation of the dead
• Learning about how and what people die from
• Discussing the implications of the “medicalisation” of death and dying
• Finding out how art, music, and media have shaped our ideas on death
• Discovering what happens in the ‘digital world’ when people die

For more details and to register interest, visit www.caresearch.com.au/dying2learn