Innovation camp as a method in health education: a study on interdisciplinarity, learning and participation

Background

Society calls for creative, innovative and enterprising health professionals who also have abilities to work interdisciplinary [1,2]. New learning methods are required to develop new skills. Health care students must develop mind-sets and skills that enable them to create, develop and take action upon new services in new or existing organisations. Students also need to develop skills for interdisciplinary collaboration and develop their own knowledge of different cultures and behaviours [3,4]. Therefore, educational institutions must challenge students in many different ways.

Teaching interdisciplinary cooperation in relation to creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship requires an unconventional approach for both teachers and students. Teachers need to draw back and consider himself or herself as a mentor or coach for students. Students must seek their own learning process rather than the teacher acting as the ruling party [5,6].

Students must not only learn ABOUT interdisciplinary, innovative and entrepreneurial work and its theories – they must also train to DO so (Ibid). In order to think differently, students must cooperate to develop ideas and transfer common professional knowledge into concrete concepts for the benefit of practice. For students and teachers, the camp method encourages a student-participatory and an interprofessional approach required to think out of the box. Thus, we introduced camp as a learning activity to engage students and provide a space to try out how to cope with uncertainty, complexity and to take action in collaboration with peers [7–9]. Camp is not an alternative to everyday teaching, but we consider camp as a supplement in line with many other engaging learning activities. Students from physiotherapy, occupational therapy, radiography, midwifery and nursing participated in camp learning activities.

Purpose

The aim was to investigate whether camp as a learning activity can contribute to support students in gaining hands-on experience in interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Methods

Curricula for health care students at University College of Northern Denmark consist of an 8-week interdisciplinary module. A 24-hour innovation camp is one of the learning activities, placed in the end of the module to give students room for using gained knowledge from interdisciplinary learnings. Approximately 235 students join this module twice a year. During 2014–2016 altogether, 1175 students participated in camp activities. Majority of students come from nursing and physiotherapy programmes due to an increased intake of students in these programmes.

Two lecturers planned, organised, coordinated and facilitated the camp learning activity. Other people involved in-house included staff from cleaning, security, canteen and janitors to secure all practical aspects of running a 24-hour learning activity. Furthermore, two additional lecturers were involved, as health professional facilitators available for students if they needed to ping-pong their ideas during the camp. Moreover, 12–24 innovation and entrepreneurship bachelor students from a business academy participated as group facilitators during each camp as a peer-to-peer learning activity. Innovation and entrepreneurship students were responsible for driving the innovation process within the groups based on their theoretical learnings in the academy [10] and adjusted to actual practical possibilities at UCN. Finally, we invited people interested in innovation and entrepreneurship (lecturers from various BA programmes at UCN and business people from outside the UCN) to act as ‘critical friends’. The concept of ‘critical friends’ gives students a possibility to pitch and get feedback on their ideas from impartial persons.

Participation was compulsory and students stayed overnight in the university which served as the camp space. Few students got a dispensation from staying overnight, e.g. due to pregnancy, illness in the family, etc. The university provided two meals for students during camp. Camp hours were from 1 pm to 1 pm next day, therefore dinner × 1 and breakfast × 1. Three groups of students shared a classroom during the day. After regular school hours for other campus students – camp students were free to use whatever space they preferred.

Students were familiar with working in assigned interdisciplinary groups during the module before the camp activity took place. Groups consisted of sixty-seven students. The concept developed by each group during camp served as examination basis for group exams following the camp.

We chose a specific and relevant health topic for each camp such as health care under pressure with more elderly and chronic patients, inequality in health, individual/tailored health care, coherence and continuity of patient care and social marginalisation.

Students worked on their own, but could ask for facilitation and inspiration from student facilitator or lecturers during camp. Student facilitators used ‘yellow, green and red zone theory inspired by design thinking (Ibid)’.

Students presented concepts to ‘critical friends’ in order to practice presentation and ‘selling’ of an idea – and learning from feedback from ‘critical friends’ to improve their developed idea of a service or a product. ‘Critical friends’ selected ideas from four criteria such as the idea that has the greatest potential in the future health care system, the idea of greatest innovation/originality, the most obvious idea needed for interdisciplinary action and the idea conveyed most clearly and interestingly. One group was appointed winner. The competition was included in the camp – due to competition as driver for engagement. Twenty-four-hour camp programme example largely outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. An example of a 24-hour camp-schedule.

Students evaluated altogether five camps from 2014 to 2016. Data consisted of online questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions. A total of 487 questionnaires were completed. Data from observations and informal interviews with facilitating lecturers and critical friends also contributed to the overall evaluation.

Results

Students answered four overall questions concerning perceived relevance of topic for the camp, the camp format, facilitation of the process and own effort in relation to active participation. Findings showed that 86% of students evaluated the camp topic as relevant, 59% stated that peer facilitators gave sufficient input during the process and 93% evaluated themselves as active and participating. The aim was to investigate whether camp as a learning activity can contribute to support students in gaining hands-on experience in interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. In the analysis of the open-ended questions, themes around the innovation process, facilitation and critical friends appeared widely among students’ feedback. The analysis showed that an innovation process provides a learning space in which students experienced motivation. Students stated that the camp format was exciting and different from other traditional activities, it was good to try out such a process and the interdisciplinary groups had good discussions about health care. Furthermore, the camp format gave new energy as a way of preparing for exams. Drawbacks related to the process being too exhausting and difficulty navigating between peer facilitators and facilitating lecturers with diverse views on innovation and health. However, the fact that peer facilitators came from ‘outside’ was viewed upon as valuable despite the perceived disadvantage that they had no knowledge on health care. Most facilitators managed to guide students through the process and create a positive learning environment. Students evaluated the concept with ‘critical friends’ as a good way to try to pitch an idea and ‘sell’ a product or service in a short time, but were also frustrated with ‘business’ feedback related to economics, marketing, customer base, etc. Lecturers experienced students as overall very engaged and most importantly very proactive in order to have open-minded discussions about their ideas for which they had a great sense of ownership. ‘Critical friends’ evaluated many ideas as very interesting and potent, and that students had a lot of professional knowledge of health care that qualified their ideas. They also pointed out that health care students need more business knowledge to develop ideas.

Conclusions

Camp as a learning activity based on peer facilitation and interdisciplinarity combined with a professional innovative focus seems to be a relevant and rewarding approach when trying to engage students to think differently in an interdisciplinary setting.

Implications

All five health care BA programmes have implemented camp as a method in curricula. New national curricula are valid from 2017 and we continue to develop and adjust the camp method. Interdisciplinary cooperation is still within the scope of curricula. We must continuously try out new learning activities in order to create engaging learning spaces for students to become creative and reflective professionals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.