Mental Disorders

Online-seminar "Mental Disorders" (equivalent to PSST for Mannheim University of Applied Science students; for international students: 2,5 ECTS)

starting March 13th (and taught by Janine Thome, not by me)

In many fields of work a social worker may be confronted with clients suffering from mental disorders. Therefore it is important to have at least basic knowledge about the most important mental disorders. This seminar will be about those mental disorders with the highest probability to encounter in the course of social work.

The seminar is special in two ways: it will be held in English, and it will be totally web based. In other words: there will be no campus sessions, everything can be done from home in front of your computer (even if some of the tasks during the course may include leaving the machine…). For students from Mannheim University of Applied Sciences the seminar is formally equivalent to the lecture “Psychische Störungen”, so you can choose which of the two to visit (including the respective record of achievement: in the campus course “Psychische Störungen” a written test after the end of the semester, in the online course “Mental Disorders” different tasks during the course and a final assignment at the end of the course).

If you consider participating in this seminar, then you should be clear about several issues:

- Seminar language is English. There will be no German lessons or tests! You do not need to perfectly speak English (I myself am far from it), but you should be able to follow English lessons and to write understandable texts.

- The seminar is totally web based. Therefore you should be familiar with computers. We will use screen lectures, a web based learning environment (Moodle), e-mail, chat, blogs... so if you think computers should be used as seldom as possible, then you should avoid this seminar!

- Since the seminar is totally web based, it is also much more flexible than other seminars (you can decide when to watch screen lectures, when to do your work etc.). But do not assume that it is less work then a campus course, for example the lecture "Psychische Störungen". Based on experience I can say that online-seminars normally are associated with more work than campus-courses. So do not join this seminar if you think it might spare you some time and energy - it will probably be the exact opposite. But therefore you do not only learn something about mental disorders, but also learn to use computers in different ways and you are going to improve your English.

If you want to participate - contact Janine Thome: janine.thome@zi-mannheim.de!