Virtual Exchange in Global Health: an innovative educational approach to foster socially responsible overseas collaboration

Abstract

Educators who design and manage study abroad programs face a series of ethical responsibilities. Meeting these responsibilities is critical in the field of global health, where study abroad programs are often designed to provide healthcare services in under-resourced communities. Leaders in global health have thus formed working groups to study the ethical implications of overseas programming and have led the way in establishing socially responsible best practices for study abroad. Their recommendations include development of bidirectional programming that is designed for mutual and equitable benefits, focused on locally identified needs and priorities, attentive to local community costs, and structured to build local capacity to ensure sustainability. Implementation remains a key challenge, however. Sustainable, bidirectional programming is difficult and costly. In the present study, authors questioned how technology could be used to connect students of global health in distant countries to make socially responsible global health programming more accessible. Drawing on empirical research in the learning sciences and leveraging best practices in technology design, the authors developed a Virtual Exchange in Global Health to connect university students in the U.S. with counterparts in Lebanon, who worked in teams to address humanitarian problems in Syrian refugee camps. Early results demonstrate the value of this approach. At dramatically lower cost than traditional study abroad—and with essentially no carbon footprint—students recognized complementary strengths in each other through bidirectional programming, learned about local needs and priorities through Virtual Reality, and built sustaining relationships while addressing a difficult real-world problem. The authors learned that technology could effectively facilitate socially responsible global health programming and do so at low cost. The program has important implications for teaching and learning during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Investigation of Health Science Students' Knowledge Regarding Healthy Lifestyle Promotion During the Spread of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…In addition, the findings support the use of an online platform and social media-based interventions, particularly during a pandemic in promoting healthy lifestyle knowledge among various health care students. Our finding complement previous studies which demonstrated the value and effectiveness of virtual education, such as online and social media intervention programs, for students in their academic environment (11)(12)(13). Such interventions are also supported by the literature with other populations than students, thereby contributing to the learning and intellectual exchange as well as provisions of health care services, such as maintaining the expected social distancing among people (10,15).…”

“…For example, the use of virtual environment, such as electronic and social media as well as web-based communication tools, can be a substitute to facilitate communication, connectedness and learning opportunities thus mitigating the challenges imposed by this pandemic (17)(18)(19)(20). Furthermore, it is of importance to note that the use of virtual learning and technology can also be applied cross-culturally to promote accessible learning and guide an international collaborative health education around the world (12). Doing so can contribute to international research opportunities among various University academicians as well as health care professionals to support optimum health care services.…”

“…The use of such technology and social media-based interventions were demonstrated to facilitate meaningful teaching experience, and to produce desired learning outcomes for students during the spread of COVID-19 pandemic crisis and beyond ( 11 ). In one study where the Instagram platform was utilized among health science students, the study found teaching through Instagram to have positive academic effects and to facilitate academic-student interaction and involvement ( 12 ). Another study that employed synchronized online classes among medical student found that the students were in favor of digital teaching and learning, in compassion to traditional teaching, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdown.…”

Marginalization and Underrepresentation in Virtual Exchange: Reasons and Remedies

“…First and foremost, despite the fact that it is by now well established that VE is as impactful as traditional study abroad programs (Olsen et al, 2006;Todhunter et al, 2013;Machwate et al, 2021), this message has yet to reach educators and educational decision makers globally. The same applies to VE-specific benefits which are supported by an emerging body of research in multiple disciplines (e.g., Bowen et al, 2021;Dawson et al, 2019). Our study reveals that there is a need to systematically increase awareness of VE in all regions, the processes involved in VE project design, best practices in VE implementation, and effective approaches to evaluating VE that bring its benefits to the fore and thus its potential impact on, for example, graduate employability.…”

Data_Sheet_1.pdf

“…The use of such technology and social mediabased interventions were demonstrated to facilitate meaningful teaching experience, and to produce desired learning outcomes for students during the spread of COVID-19 pandemic crisis and beyond (11). In one study where the Instagram platform was utilized among health science students, the study found teaching through Instagram to have positive academic effects and to facilitate academic-student interaction and involvement (12). Another study that employed synchronized online classes among medical student found that the students were in favor of digital teaching and learning, in compassion to traditional teaching, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdown.…”