Implementation and evaluation of crowdsourcing in global health education

BACKGROUND: Current global health course is most set as elective course taught in traditional teacher-taught model with low credit and short term. Innovate teaching models are required. Crowdsourcing characterized by high flexibility and strong application-orientation holds its potential to enhance global health education. We applied crowdsourcing to global health teaching for undergraduates, aiming to develop and evaluate a new teaching model for global health education. METHODS: Crowdsourcing was implemented into traditional course-based teaching via introducing five COVID-19 related global health debates. Undergraduate students majoring in preventative medicine and nursing grouped in teams of 5–8, were asked to resolve these debates in reference to main content of the course and with manner they thought most effective to deliver the messages. Students' experience and teaching effect, were evaluated by questionnaires and teachers’ ratings, respectively. McNemar's test was used to compare the difference in students' experience before and after the course, and regression models were used to explore the influencing factors of the teaching effect. RESULTS: A total of 172 undergraduates were included, of which 122 (71%) were females. Students' evaluation of the new teaching model improved after the course, but were polarized. Students’ self-reported teaching effect averaged 67.53 ± 16.8 and the teachers’ rating score averaged 90.84 ± 4.9. Students majoring in preventive medicine, participated in student union, spent more time on revision, and had positive feedback on the new teaching model tended to perform better. CONCLUSION: We innovatively implemented crowdsourcing into global health teaching, and found this new teaching model was positively received by undergraduate students with improved teaching effects. More studies are needed to optimize the implementation of crowdsourcing alike new methods into global health education, to enrich global health teaching models. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41256-022-00279-7.