A Tool for Educating Global Health Practitioners: the Curriculum Design Compass

Abstract

In health professions education there is a call for global health practitioners while in higher education there is a complementary call for internationalisation of the curriculum. However, implementation has not matched aspiration partly because of a lack of practical tools and illustrative examples. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach and presents the design and development of a practical tool: the curriculum design compass. The curriculum design compass covers four design spaces: What do students need to know about global health?; What do students need to be taught in order to develop cultural diversity awareness and intercultural competence?; How do we teach to facilitate and demonstrate intercultural learning?; and How do we bring students into contact with the wider world? The design compass was trialled with a Nutrition and Dietetics program and generalisability was confirmed with an unrelated profession. The programs studied were able to readily understand the tool and to use it to identify areas of existing good practice and areas for improvement. Therefore, it was both a review tool and a design tool enabling programs to manageably and holistically better prepare global health practitioners.

Keywords

• Global health
• Internationalisation
• Mobility
• Curriculum