Moodle in English

I think whatever you do...there will be a need to think about how you engage students, this may be page 1.  For example, students will be more likely to be motivated if there is a purpose 'they' recognise/connect with.  

Once the innovative method for engagement is established, the rest should work itself out, to be honest.

I could be wrong.

Warm wishes

Dawn   

My visceral reaction (ie. very uninformed LOL) is to create courses around the themes not the placements.  Since the theme is the underlying thread of all the placements...it feels like the placements are a child of the themes not the other way around.

So you would then have very concrete curriculum objectives in each theme course ... you would write the objectives for each theme and then the practicum work would be focused around achieving the goals of the themes.

Then you could handle specific goals of the placements in a course by itself as well...or different courses for each placement.   I guess you have basic stuff about the science in each placement: anatomy; pharmacology; diagnosis; human life cycle management; blah blah blah..

Like the previous poster I am asking you to think about Moodle a little differently that a tool to keep track of things.  Capitalize on the opportunity to develop student mind-set around the very concrete curricular focus and values your institution purports.  You will do this by helping the students "connect the dots" between the relationship of all these things.  Then, as they participate in the practicums you build highly interactive engaging activities in Moodle where the students make up a great deal of the teacher presence in the courses.

I agree with Dawn and Keith.

I'm not sure how much of your question is about how students travel around their course/s, but it seems to me that you are setting up a number of courses and students will enrol on the course for their placement specialism when and as they commence it.

I think I would have approached this slightly differently, with the longitudinal themes in a meta course, so that students had to complete part of that (the 'fundamentals') before going on to the specialities. You could add key 'issues' in the meta course and send them back to look at 'key issues in Surgery' 'key issues in Paediatrics' from the placement courses.

It's probably too late to make a meta course, but you can achieve the same effect by putting links to the longitudinal course (put all of these 'fundamental' themes into just one course - there are interactive) within the placement courses, and set up some forums for discussion about the application of theory/models etc. within the placement courses.