Development of a Learner-Centered Curriculum for a Rural Public Health Program

Background: Rural communities often exhibit higher rates of poor health compared to urban areas, fueling health disparities.  Learner-centered teaching strategies, including collaboration and power-sharing, help faculty enable future health professionals to address needs of rural, underserved populations, thereby advancing public health (PH) practice.  PH faculty and an instructional designer collaborated to develop courses for a newly launched PH program in a rural Midwestern university. 

Methods: Five PH faculty and an instructional designer collaborated during New Faculty Immersion Week and New Faculty Transition Program (NFTP) workshops in Fall 2014.  Immersion Week activities aimed to clarify vision, mission, and competencies of BSPH & MPH programs; plan and organize course development; map program curricula; and determine program assessment measures and instructional design.  NFTP objectives included gaining teaching skills and knowledge, establishing supportive networks of colleagues, and identifying relevant university resources.  With NFTP assistance, faculty conducted and reflected on Small-Group Instructional Diagnoses (SGIDs), facilitator-led mid-semester formative assessments of students’ learning experiences.  Minutes from program meetings, NFTP workshops, and SGIDs were compiled and summarized.

Results: Faculty reported Immersion Week, NFTP workshops, and opportunities to discuss feedback with colleagues all impacted their teaching.  Faculty discussed how data from SGIDs illuminated variance in students’ learning needs and opinions of their experiences.  Subsequently, eight learner-centered BSPH courses were developed in Fall 2014, with two delivered in Spring 2015.

Conclusions/Recommendations: Recommendations and lessons learned from these methods provided faculty with effective learner-centered teaching strategies, incorporated into course development and illustrated in course evaluations.  Further research may elucidate these findings.