When each student is in charge of creating one class, how do you ensure classes are connected and the course is cohesive? Alexandra Searle (spring 2014) finds linking her class with the module and Development Advisory Team projects valuable. Read on to find what her mentee, Sarah Clark (spring 2016), has to say.
Sarah Clark:
Key takeaways from my interview with Ali Searle:
-Ali stressed creating a logical sequence within each teaching module (introduction, relevant skills, and applications). This can be done by:
-Making it a priority not to let previous lessons sit in isolation from current lessons.
-Starting lessons with review of material from past lessons and end with broader implications and where the module/class is going.
-Ali said that their class had a lot of success and in-class engagement when activities and lessons were connected with Development Advisory Team (DAT) work. This was possible by:
-Integrating DAT topics and apply skills from class to how they may be used in DAT work
-Helping prevent abstraction and making lessons immediately applicable
-In terms of teaching tips, Ali stressed discussion and active learning. She mentioned that many of the students in her year were a little nervous to let questions or discussion topics hang for a while when waiting for responses, but that this "waiting time" was necessary for good class input and discussion.
-Organization is key for DAT project:
-Breaking project up into smaller sub-goals to allowing for continued refining and clear direction
-Starting early: more detailed ideas at the beginning will allow for better feedback and a more polished project
ALEXANDRA SEARLE
Development Advisory Team: Partners in Health, Mexico
"Following graduation, I enrolled as an MPH student at Johns Hopkins with a concentration in International Health. After about nine months in the classroom, I received funding to do independent field work in Mali. I then spent five months in Mali, where I had the privilege to collaborate and work alongside Malian doctors and PhD students. My work in Mali utilized qualitative methods to describe local understandings of and reactions to prescription medications during pregnancy among HIV-positive women. Currently, I am finishing up my thesis and a manuscript for publication using data from Mali. Upon graduating next month, I plan to stay at Hopkins as a Research Program Coordinator. In that position, I will be directing a study using MDR-TB as a paradigm case to develop a social justice model for decision-makers to use alongside the age-old cost effectiveness analysis when deciding where and how to unroll novel treatments."