Document Type

Article

Abstract

The study introduces and evaluates a unique inter-faculty service learning course as a pedagogical model that enhances students’ learning and knowledge of health problems and associated engineering intervention design for populations affected by protracted crises.

Background: With an increase in humanitarian protracted crises around the world, due to conflict and natural disasters, we are in dire need to reinvent how we educate, train, and conduct research in these environments. Engineering and Health Sciences disciplines, individually and collectively, have been working to fill the gaps and address pressing public health issues. However, courses merging those disciplines and focusing on emerging humanitarian challenges have been limited. To meet this need, and to expose the complexity of refugee health and well-being, the Humanitarian Engineering course “Design of Engineering Solutions for Health Challenges in Crisis” was launched in July 2017.

Intended outcomes: The contribution is a set of elements that can serve as a foundation for developing an inter-faculty service learning course model through which students acquire skills in design thinking, interdisciplinary approaches, and contextualized innovation.

Application design: Through a literature review and iterative course development process, the different components of the course model were developed and assessed to ensure students accomplished learning outcomes and professional skills.

Findings: The study recommends a set of five elements that could be used as a foundation for developing an inter-faculty service learning model. Those include: modular learning, intermittent session types, participatory active learning, intensive learning, and teamwork.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.24908/ijsle.v14i2.13391

Rights

Authors retain the copyright for material published in IJSLE, including but not limited to all rights to authorize subsequent publication and/or translation. Any factual inaccuracies or opinions expressed therein are the authors' own, and do not necessarily reflect the knowledge, views, or positions of the Pennsylvania State University, any of the university's units, or The Journal's editors.

Material appearing in The International Journal of Service Learning in Engineering may be distributed freely by electronic or any other means, providing that any such distribution is without charge (unless for purposes of cost recovery by interlibrary loan services) and that The Journal is acknowledged as the source. However, no article may be reprinted in any publication without the explicit written permission of the author(s).

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

APA Citation

Najem, Y., Elhajj, I. H., Dawy, Z., Germani, A., Ghattas, H., Zaman, M., & Yazdi, Y. (2019). Humanitarian Engineering Design for Health Challenges: An Inter-faculty Service Based Learning Model. International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship, 14(2), 16–32. https://doi.org/10.24908/ijsle.v14i2.13391

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