Week 3: Special interests (Autism MOOC) - transcript

Swinburne Commons
Title: Week 3: Special interests (Autism MOOC)
Author(s):
Mick Grimley (Swinburne University of Technology),
Emma L. Donaldson (Swinburne University of Technology)
Year: 2015
Audio/video available from: http://commons.swinburne.edu.au
Copyright owned by presenter and Swinburne University of Technology. This transcript is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Mick Grimley:
Welcome to week three of Swinburne's Autism MOOC. My name is Mick Grimley.
Emma Donaldson:
And I'm Emma Donaldson.
Mick Grimley:
This week, the topic of interest is special interests. So Emma, can you tell us a little bit about this
topic?
Emma Donaldson:
I can. So in autism, often people on the spectrum have a very focused interest and that can vary. So
anything from vacuum cleaners right through to AFL or a football team and it's very diverse. So we
explore special interests from both the positive and the negative sides of the special interests in the
scenarios this week.
Mick Grimley:
And do people with autism always have a special interest?
Emma Donaldson:
For the most part. Again, we see the individual, but it's normally described as a passion or an
extreme focus. A special interest is another term that's been used but it's better to use that than 'an
obsession' is the way we like to look at it.
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Mick Grimley:
And also again we are going to move on with our skills this week, and the skill this week is entitled
'what if?'
Emma Donaldson:
Yes.
Mick Grimley:
Tell us more about 'what if?'
Emma Donaldson:
Well, that's a really exciting one because 'what if?' means we are actually going to explore the...
what we've put in place already with our person first. We've stepped into the shoes of the other
person, we've started to define what problem is it that we're trying to solve and now we think,
"What if? What if I actually do implement something here?" And so, thinking about what those
outcomes might be if I implement that 'what if?', and that really is the skill that we're focused on this
week.
Mick Grimley:
Sounds great. And that wraps up our introduction for week three.
See you next week.
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