MOOC & coaching

Initial situation

This project is part of the course “Global Health at the Human-Animal-Ecosystem Interface” offered to students of the Master in Global Health since September 2017.  As this course is new, the teachers wanted to meet a certain number of pedagogical requirements: introduce students to the humanitarian context and its key actors and allow them to acquire theoretical knowledge in global health while confronting them with concrete requests made by people directly concerned. The project was carried out in the context of a collaboration between the Global Studies Institute and InZone. InZone develops innovative approaches to provide access to higher education in fragile contexts.

Project implementation

First, following the principle of the flipped classroom, students are first exposed to the MOOC “Global Health at the Human-Animal-Ecosystem Interface” before the class in order to practice, apply the concepts and verify their good understanding of them. At the same time, the students took a course on specific teaching techniques adapted to refugees in fragile contexts.

In a second phase, following the pedagogical concept of “learning by teaching”, students were able to develop their applied skills, interacting directly with refugees through concrete public health issues. They were put in contact with a group of 15 refugee students from Kakuma camp (Kenya) who were following a simplified version of the MOOC. For this purpose, 2 exchange groups were created (via the WhatsApp application). One group was composed of the Master students, the teaching staff, the refugee students and 3 local tutors. Another group was composed of only the Master’s students and the teaching staff. The Master’s students were asked to coach the refugee students by initiating weekly debates. They had to provide answers and comments to specific questions asked by the refugee students (sometimes spontaneously). To do so, they had to conduct active research, debate with other students in the Master’s program as well as with the teachers.

Finally, they had to reflect on their work and their contribution by creating an online evaluation form for the refugee students.

Thoughts and advice

This course format requires a certain investment from teachers as well as flexibility and creativity in the way they teach through the use of communication tools such as WhatsApp. It allows for the identification of research opportunities specific to the problems encountered in the field and for a better understanding of their potential limitations.

Student feedback

The refugee students reported that they greatly appreciated and benefited from the learning in the course. They were also highly motivated and engaged in their interactions throughout the course.