When the lightbulb comes on!
PHHP faculty use innovative teaching strategies to spark learning
The College of Public Health and Health Professions’ most valuable resource for educating its students is our faculty, says George Hack, Ph.D., the college’s associate dean for educational affairs.
“We have some of the best minds in the country,” Hack said. “These faculty are conducting cutting-edge research and practicing in their fields. And the best way to take advantage of expertise like that is to not view faculty as just human textbooks, but to design courses that allow instructors to engage students in creative thinking about health issues and new discoveries.”
A decade ago, PHHP made a commitment to designing most courses in a blended learning format to encourage more meaningful classroom experiences. In a blended learning model like the flipped classroom, students watch instructors’ lectures online outside of the classroom — and then use class time for hands-on activities, case studies and discussion with the instructor. The college’s instructional design team supports faculty in the development of engaging content, both in online and in-person environments.
“It’s less about preparing to be a performer who delivers an entertaining lecture and more about designing a course for interaction where the students are asking the instructors questions instead of the other way around,” Hack said. “When students start engaging, talking and debating amongst themselves, when you see the light bulbs going off right there in front of you, it’s just like magic.”
Read on for two examples of how PHHP instructors are inspiring deeper learning in global public health and occupational therapy.
Hands-on global health
The college’s Global Public Health course is designed to help undergraduates understand concepts in worldwide health that students can then apply to any of the disciplines they pursue. But how can students appreciate the health challenges of people living in mostly low- and middle-income countries when they may seem a world away?
Instructors Heather Stark, M.D., M.P.H., and Daniel Acosta, who each teach sections of the course, have devised unique experiential learning activities that bring these topics closer to home.
For example, one class activity required students to think differently about a valuable resource many Americans take for granted.
“We’re very fortunate here in the U.S. that we can turn on a tap and have clean water, but in many countries, people do not have that easy access,” said Stark, a clinical associate professor of epidemiology. “Traditionally, in many low- and middle-income countries, it’s women or girls who are responsible for collecting water that may not even be clean by our standards. They potentially walk very far to collect water and this has implications for their health, development and ability to attend school.”
Students in the UF 2023 Summer Health Professions Education Program were able to participate in the
One Health fictional country simulation, which originally debuted in the Global Public Health course.
Lindsay Gamble
In this class activity, students were handed buckets and told: “Go find water.”
At the creek that runs behind the HPNP Complex, students negotiated an embankment to fill a bucket with water that was only a few inches deep. After carrying full buckets a distance and getting a feel for just how heavy they are, students were challenged to think about how to use that water for a day’s worth of household hand washing.
“We asked the students to think about how many times a day they would wash their hands if water was scarce,” Stark said. “What health implications do you have to consider when using this water? Would you wash less? And how would you go about washing your hands? Would you dunk dirty hands in the bucket, or pour the water out? You’ve walked far for this water, and so you don’t want to just carelessly splash it all over.”
In another course activity, students participated in a fast-paced simulation of a fictional country in the throes of a cholera epidemic. Students needed to take a One Health approach to address the human and animal health needs of residents of the “Republic of Gators.”
“This is the first time an in-class activity has aided my learning in a direct manner where I could immediately point out things I learned,” said Ryan Jin, a Bachelor of Public Health student on a pre-dental track. “Each week I looked forward to class, as I knew I would learn something new that had real relevance in my career.”
Acosta, a One Health Ph.D. student in the department of environmental and global health, built the simulation’s software with inspiration from an activity he experienced in engineering school in Colombia, the “beer game.” Acosta is quick to clarify that there is no beer consumption involved in the game, rather, beer game participants engage in simulations of various supply chain problems that affect beer production, from hops harvest all the way to retail distribution.
In the water collection
and handwashing
activity, students were
challenged to think
about how to collect
and efficiently use
water for household
hand washing.
Lindsay Gamble
“I’ve been working in global health and interacting with complex systems for some years now,” Acosta said. “I wanted to find a way for students to be able to understand how their decisions may affect the health outcomes of others.”
In the One Health simulation, teams of students represented states within the Republic of Gators, each with their own set of geopolitical issues related to the cholera crisis. Other students served in administrative roles, including officers of veterinary health, agriculture and human health. All vied for the attention of the country’s prime minister and made their case for funding.
“We put the students in the position to make decisions on how much money they’re going to ask for and the prime minister had the hard choice of where to allocate money. Putting more money in one state means less money for another and that created some very interesting dynamics,” Acosta said. For Jared Craig, a combination Bachelor of Public Health and Master of Public Health student, the simulation brought home the concepts learned in class in a very real way.
“Global health is very, very complex. I knew it was complex by the vast array of topics we had learned in class and how they can complicate one another, interact with other social determinants of health, and more, but ‘living’ that struggle in this simulation brought that complexity to life,” Craig said. “There is never going to be a right answer, only the best approach that a team can make given the immense amount of data and factors being thrown at them to solve an issue.”
— Written by Jill Pease
Daniel Acosta explains the guidelines for the
One Health simulation.
Lindsay Gamble
Clinical experience cultivates classroom leadership
The Occupational Therapy Equal Access Clinic, or OT EAC, a student-run free clinic operated by volunteer Doctor of Occupational Therapy students under the supervision of faculty clinicians, provides an important service for members of the community who cannot afford occupational therapy following illness or injury. It is also a valuable hands-on learning experience for OT EAC student volunteers. But the educational benefits don’t end there.
Faculty members have discovered that OT EAC student volunteers have carried their experiences into the classroom as peer leaders, translating real-world experiences into mentorship and guidance for fellow students as they seek answers to complex problems using clinical judgement.
Anna Galloway, O.T.D., OTR/L, a clinical assistant professor in the department of occupational therapy and the faculty coordinator for the OT EAC, witnessed the OT EAC students’ classroom leadership during her lab course.
“I divided all of my OT EAC executive board members across all different lab groups,” Galloway said. “The students started to emerge as leaders of their groups, where they were facilitating critical thinking, clinical reasoning and guiding students to an answer by giving space for their peers to think on their own, rather than providing their own answer.”
Galloway and other faculty members who serve as clinical supervisors in the OT EAC emphasize student engagement with clients and active learning to inform clinical decision-making and the development of treatment plans. As a result, OT EAC student volunteers have also gained the skills to serve as pseudo-instructors in the classroom.
Caroline Cox, equal
access clinic board
member, assists a
patient with activities
of daily living.
Jesse S. Jones
“I divided all of my OT EAC executive board members across all different lab groups,” Galloway said. “The students started to emerge as leaders of their groups, where they were facilitating critical thinking, clinical reasoning and guiding students to an answer by giving space for their peers to think on their own, rather than providing their own answer.”
Galloway and other faculty members who serve as clinical supervisors in the OT EAC emphasize student engagement with clients and active learning to inform clinical decision-making and the development of treatment plans. As a result, OT EAC student volunteers have also gained the skills to serve as pseudo-instructors in the classroom.
“The students involved (in the OT EAC) were modeling the same strategies we were using to instruct them in the clinic with the rest of their peers in the classroom,” Galloway said.
The OT EAC Executive Board. Front row: Mary Huntley, Marley Seymour and Ocean Bolocon. Back row: Dr. Anna Baird-Galloway, Caroline Cox, Cailyn Toro and Juliet Rapaport.
Jesse S. Jones
This type of instruction helps students navigate the ever-evolving field of occupational therapy, while learning how to tailor treatment goals to meet the individual needs of clients.
“In the classroom we do a lot of flipped lectures, where we talk through clinical reasoning during a case study. Then we go and try out what we talked about, practice and sometimes fail. We figure out why we failed, improve and try again,” Galloway said. “This is what clinical practice is all about. If we are working with someone, we must have the ability to recognize what isn’t working and change directions. That is what I want my students to take away; not just the skills of being an OT, but also the skills of being a thoughtful, self-aware and intentional clinician.”
For Morgan Pleasants, an OT EAC volunteer and third-year O.T.D. student, hands-on clinical experiences at the clinic have enabled her to grow her critical thinking skills, while also providing her with valuable feedback to become a clinical scientist and peer leader.
“Each week I received meaningful feedback on how to advance my occupational therapy practitioner skills,” Pleasants said. “Sometimes faculty clinicians would introduce an OT skill that has not yet been targeted in lecture material. This would allow me to be introduced to a new topic and be a peer mentor with prior experience when it is covered in lecture material. I am a more independent practitioner because of the confidence that EAC has given me to think on the spot and apply my OT knowledge.”
Galloway says fostering clinical confidence in the classroom is crucial. Her teaching approach emphasizes the development of strong relationship-building skills, as well as using a client-centered approach to meet goals. She does this through the constant cultivation of her own clinical curiosity, a value she hopes to nurture in her students.
“I approach my teaching with a lot of curiosity,” Galloway said. “A lot of times our clients can’t articulate exactly why they’re here to see us. It’s our job to figure that out with them.”
Gina Froehlich, a third-year student in the O.T.D. program, employs clinical curiosity in all her patient interactions, a mindset solidified through her work as a student clinician with the equal access clinic.
“Now that I am on my first full-time clinical rotation as a student clinician, I can see how the EAC helped prepare me and greatly increased my comfortability with patient interaction, treatment sessions and my documentation,” Froehlich said. “Overall, it increased my confidence with my skills and knowledge by providing me with continuous practice and exposure on a weekly basis that translated into my coursework and peer interactions.”
— Written by Katarina Fiorentino Klatzkow
Equal access clinic board member Cailyn Toro demonstrates lower body dressing techniques.
Jesse S. Jones
