DESIGN THINKING AS A STUDENT ENGAGING PEDAGOGY IN PUBLIC HEALTH: a report of an undergraduate experience
Resumo
Background: Meeting the learning styles and needs of new student generations is difficult for conventional epidemiology curricular approaches that focus on numbers and statistics. Design thinking is an innovative approach to applying public health in intervention contexts that has promise for invigorating epidemiology pedagogy and improving the salience of public health courses for public health practice.
Methods: Stanford University’s Design Thinking manual was adapted for an undergraduate epidemiology course and applied over 11 class sessions. The framework enabled students to develop new interventions, communication strategies and programs based on selected health challenges within the local community. A model for presentation was a central element.
Results: 312 students over four years created over 77 solutions adapted to local community health needs. Student self-reports highlighted the importance of working in teams, the ability to solve real world problems and the satisfaction of filling gaps in critical disease areas with creative thinking. Three projects are highlighted where students continued development and implemented their ideas including creating a college campus safety app, sexual health vending machine, and an app to monitor alcohol consumption.
Conclusions: Design Thinking can optimize classroom learning and capitalize on essential soft skills for future public health and health professionals. Broad application to courses such as epidemiology courses could close important gaps between classroom learning and applications to the real world. The unique style of linking student projects with community agencies may facilitate the dissemination of developed projects and strengthen ties between colleges and communities.
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