Contributed by Sarah Bonser-Blake, Wild Welfare (SARCC member)
Whenever I tell people about the reboot of our digital education programme, one of the first questions is usually ‘Why?’. The programme is still relatively young, it’s still getting extensive use and continues to receive consistently positive feedback. Why would we go to so much trouble to relaunch it?
To answer this, firstly let’s examine how quickly the world of animal welfare science is moving. Progress is exceedingly rapid, which means that new developments and processes are being shared all the time, and we want to make sure our resources are as up-to-date as possible. In the short space of time, since we originally launched our learning programme back in 2021, we’ve seen human-animal interactions highlighted more in the literature, amendments to animal welfare frameworks made, and more research on previously underrepresented species such as fish and reptiles.
The original idea behind the programme was to provide an introduction to animal welfare concepts and the way in which these ideas can be applied to animal care. Because of this, we didn’t necessarily have the space to include the full extent of all the new information in the revision of our programme, but what we could do is ensure that information is current and applicable wherever possible, including elements of welfare science as it progresses.
As we devised our redevelopment plan, the first area we wanted to address was the inclusion of sanctuary and rescue centre specific material within the learning content. This resource was developed for all wild animal care facilities but some of the information initially focussed more on the experiences of zoos and aquariums rather than other wild animal facilities. We wanted the unique nuances and challenges of sanctuaries and rescue centres to be equally represented and explored. New pages investigating what sanctuaries and rescue centres are, as well as the unexpected nature of animal acquisitions within these facilities have been added to the course content. Additionally, several new quiz questions on sanctuary and rescue centre specific scenarios have also been added. Furthermore, the information within the materials has been opened up with the aim to be more inclusive of these facilities.
Secondly, we have been listening to our feedback. Talking to some of our thousands of programme users around the world has helped us gain a better understanding of their experiences. Some suggestions were slight tweaks and adjustments to specific translations. We found this out when we ran our programme in Vietnam with a collective of sanctuary and rescue centre staff, and we had a long conversation about the term “quality of life.” It was at this event that the need for the inclusion of more sanctuary-specific content was initially emphasised.
However, we have also received over 40 pages worth of feedback from online users who had more generalist suggestions such as the inclusion of more aquatic content. We have aimed to address this with a new page on aquatic environments and more fish-related examples used within the learning materials where possible.
After talking to many animal care staff over the past few years in our project countries and beyond, we also noticed that many people were confusing the concepts of animal care and animal welfare. In order to have a positive impact on animal welfare, it is important to understand the differences, so we have also added a new page exploring these two concepts in order to solidify understanding.
Other revised areas include better video examples used within the interactive quizzes, further exploration of concepts such as contra freeloading or co-operative care, and even the opportunity to correct one or two pesky typos that made it through the endless rounds of proof-reading the first time round!
The entire Wild Welfare team is incredibly grateful to Elliot and Koh from AfA SARCC for their valuable insights and assistance for these reboot activities. They were very gracious in making suggestions and corrections to the new content, and their endless enthusiasm for this revision really helped us to get it over the finish line.
You can access the English revision of the Wild About Welfare Digital Education programme HERE, and we look forward to sharing the translations of this programme once the revisions have been completed.
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