Collaboration Spanning Two Continents: An Online Master’s Degree in Tropical Animal Health

Abstract

A joint international program in Tropical Animal Health was launched in 2016 by the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, and the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria. This program is flexible in time, place, and curriculum, allowing part-time students to apply the program’s learning outcomes directly in their daily work environment. This article focuses on the major challenges and issues related to developing an international joint program in general and how these challenges were addressed. Challenges such as incompatibility of admission procedures, merging academic calendars, and quality assurance mechanisms were mitigated partly by the type of collaboration and partly by using a joint e-learning platform. The e-learning format proved to be a solution for particular challenges such as mobility issues, joint development of course material, and administrative processes. Furthermore, we present the results of a survey on the experiences of graduates and facilitators in this unique joint, web-based program.

Creating a platform to enable collaborative learning in One Health: The Joint Initiative for Teaching and Learning on Global Health Challenges and One Health experience

“…The organizational challenges include the different criteria to assign credits across institutions, the lack of bibliographic material available across all partners, limited overlap hours for synchronous activities. Education initiatives applying blended learning in international classes faced similar challenges (Global Health, in Australia and Indonesia [ 18 ] and Tropical Animal Health, in Belgium and South Africa [ 19 ]). It reinforces the necessity of robust logistical support, curriculum alignment [ 18 ], and a merged academic calendar [ 19 ].…”