The benefits of experiential learning in global public health

Teaching and learning lifestyle medicine during COVID-19: how has living during a pandemic influenced students' understanding and attitudes to self-care and population health? A qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND

In 2019 a new Lifestyle Medicine (LM) module was introduced to the undergraduate medical curriculum at Imperial College London. Lifestyle Medicine is an emergent discipline which aims to tackle the increasing burden of non-communicable disease. Previous work has suggested that students value clinical teaching over traditional Public Health topics. Taking a constructivist view of learning, this paper assesses changes in medical students' attitudes towards Public Health and LM in response to living through a pandemic. We then make suggestions as to how this lived experience might be useful in teaching LM, and discuss the interaction between teaching, behaviour, and experience with consideration of self-determination theories in learning.

METHODS

First-year medical students were surveyed at the end of their first year of teaching and asked if living during the COVID-19 pandemic had changed the value they place on LM and if so, how. Thematic analysis was conducted on responses representing 71% (n = 216) of the year group.

RESULTS

Four themes were defined in the data: acknowledging importance; impact on behaviour; health inequalities and the wider determinants; and promoting Public Health and prevention. These themes highlight the distinct levels through which the pandemic has had an impact: from personal behaviour to population health.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the first study to look at the impact of living through a pandemic on attitudes to LM. Our results suggest that the pandemic has led to increased reflection on health behaviours. The lived-experience of COVID-19 may facilitate a better understanding of health inequalities and their impact, alongside the opportunities presented by effective LM interventions.

Experiential Learning in Career Development

This manuscript demonstrates the learning experiences of graduate public health students through mentored field research in cancer epidemiology and cancer prevention over the past 13 years. The program has been funded through an R25 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 2006 and has supported nearly 200 students from different universities in the USA. Included are data on student recruitment, selection, mentorship, and evaluation of research training in US minority settings as well as foreign countries. Examples of students' learning experiences and life-long skills that shaped students' careers are presented. The insights that fostered the experiential learning idea among key leaders at the NCI Cancer training branch have proven to be sound.

An Evaluation of an Experiential Learning Program in Global and Indigenous Health: The University of Manitoba's Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship Program

We conducted a mixed-methods outcome evaluation to examine student experiences and learning in the University of Manitoba’s Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship Program in Global and Indigenous Health. Our scholarship program is a bi-directional, 3-month international experiential learning program, including both undergraduate and graduate students, with associated online course focused on community engagement. Students completed a semi-structured narrative report at the conclusion of their funding related to their experience and learning. The Likert questions were analyzed descriptively and student responses to the open-ended questions were utilized for thematic analysis. Also included in this paper is a summary of our lessons learned through program administration. A total of 38 students completed the program between 2016 and 2018, with 95% reporting that they either met or exceeded their goals in the program. Three overarching and inter-related themes emerged in our thematic-analysis of students’ narrative reports, including success through relationships and new perspectives, challenges of the unfamiliar, and personal growth through strong emotions. Many students reported personal growth as their greatest success and linked this with new perspectives and awareness of how different contexts shaped their understanding of health issues. Overcoming challenges in their placements contributed to students’ confidence in their ability to problem-solve. Overall, students reported value in their experiential learning, which further supports the growing trend to incorporate both experiential learning and formal education in community engagement in public health pedagogy. However, international experiential learning requires considerable financial and human resource commitments to ensure its success.

Practical and Ethical Solutions for Remote Applied Learning Experiences in Global Health

Global health trainees rely on immersive experiences to apply their classroom knowledge in real-world settings. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic travel has come to a halt and short-term experiences are no longer available in their current form. As with didactic material, global health programs have an opportunity to innovate the delivery of applied learning, providing trainees with robust, mentored experiences that promote the acquisition of core global health competencies. We provide a series of practical solutions for remote applied learning including case-based learning, pathfinder pedagogy, virtual reality simulations, and twinning. We further describe the role of these approaches in addressing common criticisms of short-term experiences and their potential for creating new win-win dynamics between institutions and trainees.

Design by Immersion: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Problem-Driven Visualizations

While previous work exists on how to conduct and disseminate insights from problem-driven visualization projects and design studies, the literature does not address how to accomplish these goals in transdisciplinary teams in ways that advance all disciplines involved. In this paper we introduce and define a new methodological paradigm we call design by immersion, which provides an alternative perspective on problem-driven visualization work. Design by immersion embeds transdisciplinary experiences at the center of the visualization process by having visualization researchers participate in the work of the target domain (or domain experts participate in visualization research). Based on our own combined experiences of working on cross-disciplinary, problem-driven visualization projects, we present six case studies that expose the opportunities that design by immersion enables, including (1) exploring new domain-inspired visualization design spaces, (2) enriching domain understanding through personal experiences, and (3) building strong transdisciplinary relationships. Furthermore, we illustrate how the process of design by immersion opens up a diverse set of design activities that can be combined in different ways depending on the type of collaboration, project, and goals. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential pitfalls of design by immersion.

Learn by Doing: A Model for Incorporating High-Impact Experiential Learning Into an Undergraduate Public Health Curriculum

Many accredited schools and programs of public health integrate experiential learning into the capstone experience for undergraduate public health majors; thus, the experiential learning capstone must be both cumulative and integrative. A goal of experiential learning is to foster the application of concepts and skills learned in the classroom to real-world public health situations. Students may benefit from earlier opportunities to engage in high-impact experiential learning activities. Therefore, the University of Iowa College of Public Health developed an experiential learning requirement that is separate from the capstone course. Our students' experiential learning activities do not need to be cumulative across the entire curriculum, but they should be integrative. Public health undergraduate students at the University of Iowa must successfully complete at least one of the following experiences in public health: research, internship, service learning, or global learning. This article will provide a model for the creation of an experiential learning program for undergraduate public health students that is separate from the culminating, capstone experience.