Diversity in nationalities and educational background as an outset for relearning (NN8)

Learning consultants’ reflection on NN connection of this activity 
The example shows how relearning takes place in an international cohort of students. This course has between 50 – 60 students with 20 to 25 different nationalities and are also diverse according to their academic backgrounds (degrees from business schools to different health care degrees). This diversity in cultural and educational backgrounds creates a multitude of different perspectives among the students. The different perspectives are used as a part of the students learning process in the designed teaching activities of the course. Together with the teachers, groups of students have a shared responsibility of analysing and delivering part of the curriculum for the rest of the students. Guided by the teachers, students choose, analyse and present a case in plenum. For this work all students are mixed in groups to use their different perspectives from their educational and cultural backgrounds. Through this work students will see different perspectives from their group members and learn from each other through this experience. They also teach the rest of the students to do the same when facilitating group work on class afterwards as part of their presentation. 

Teaching philosophy
“Students need to discuss what type of case would be interesting and how to translate these materials into something that can be analyzed. I think this type of responsibility is good for the learning process. It becomes a distributed responsibility between the teacher and the students. They have the responsibility (with the help of the teachers), to choose, analyze and facilitate the discussion. And the other students have a responsibility to participate.” 

Kirstine Zink Pedersen 

Key objectives 

• Demonstrate an understanding of central organizational theories and concepts and evaluate their relevance in analyzing and improving healthcare innovation processes 
• Identify, describe, and define a healthcare innovation case and identify relevant organizational challenges 
•  Make a theory-driven analysis of the healthcare innovation case using organizational theories from at least two different organizational theory agendas 
• Suggest an alternative innovation/improvement process based on the analysis’s findings and insights from the course curriculum. 

Description of the activity
Each group is appointed a lecture from the curriculum. They chose a healthcare innovation case and construct questions for the rest of the groups to work with at the beginning of the following lecture. The point is to teach the students how to apply organizational theory to healthcare innovation cases, as well as teach them the strengths and shortcomings of these theories for analyzing, guiding, critically engaging with, implementing etc. healthcare innovation. 

The groups are expected to deliver 10 pages of case material for the rest of the class to read and create questions for the groups to work with. These should be questions that operationalize concepts and analytical tools from the curriculum. Groups are also required to facilitate group work in class and a wrap-up of the exercise (with the help of the teacher).