School: Medical and Health Sciences

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Ageing, Health and Wellbeing
  • Unit Code

    HST6355
  • Year

    2025
  • Enrolment Period

    1
  • Version

    1
  • Credit Points

    20
  • Full Year Unit

    N
  • Mode of Delivery

    On Campus
    Online
  • Unit Coordinator

    Ms Jennifer IRVINE

Description

In this unit, students investigate issues associated with older adults' (65+ years) health and wellbeing from a strengths-based, public health perspective. Students will consider demographic transitions, the social construction of ageing, and individual and population level factors influencing health and wellbeing amongst diverse older adult population groups. They will also identify specific challenges amongst targeted populations of older adults, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and other culturally-diverse groups. Students will design public health responses that maximise older adults' prospects to enjoy a healthy, socially-engaged and meaningful life.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Apply physical activity, nutrition and social engagement strategies to promote positive mental health and wellbeing in older adults.
  2. Communicate confidently with older adults, their carers and clinicians to promote positive mental health and wellbeing.
  3. Use initiative to plan, implement and evaluate interventions that enable wellbeing amongst older adults.
  4. Engage in critical self-reflection to improve ongoing personal and professional performance in regard to promoting the health and wellbeing of older adults.

Unit Content

  1. Demographic transitions and the social construction of ageing.
  2. Determinants of healthy ageing.
  3. Socio-ecological approaches to promoting healthy ageing.
  4. Behavioural approaches to promoting ageing.
  5. Primary health care approaches to promoting ageing.
  6. Promoting positive cognitive and mental health amongst older adults.
  7. Elder abuse.
  8. Loss and grief.
  9. A continuum of care: Promoting older adults’ health in the community and through residential aged care.
  10. Promoting older adults’ health through information and communication technologies.

Learning Experience

ON-CAMPUS

Students will attend on campus classes as well as engage in learning activities through ECU's LMS

JoondalupMount LawleySouth West (Bunbury)
Semester 113 x 3 hour seminarNot OfferedNot Offered

For more information see the Semester Timetable

ONLINE

Students will engage in learning experiences via ECU’s LMS as well as additional ECU learning technologies

Additional Learning Experience Information

Students engage collaboratively to examine the challenges to older adults’ health and wellbeing, including functional decline and social isolation. Learning activities and assessments encourage students to use initiative, engage with industry partners and build emotional self-awareness through critical reflection activities, developing strategies to improve the health and wellbeing of older adults living in a variety of settings, including in the community-based and in residential aged care.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

ON CAMPUS
TypeDescriptionValue
AssignmentPlanning and communicating with older adults: Prepare your interview.20%
ProjectIntervention design: Implementation and evaluation with older adults.40%
PresentationSelecting strategies for healthy ageing and critical reflections.40%
ONLINE
TypeDescriptionValue
AssignmentPlanning and communicating with older adults: Prepare your interview.20%
ProjectIntervention design: Implementation and evaluation with older adults.40%
PresentationSelecting strategies for healthy ageing and critical reflections.40%

Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

Plagiarism

Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).

Unauthorised collaboration (collusion)

Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).

Contract cheating

Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.

Cheating in an exam

Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

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