Category Archives: News

Global Health Challenge 2022/23

News

The University’s award winning Global Health Challenge is restarting in 2022/23 following a break due to Covid. We are inviting students from our eight schools to work together across 6 teams to design innovative and entrepreneurial solutions for the global issues of climate change, sustainability and public health. The aim being to improve social, cultural, physical and mental wellbeing.

With growing awareness of how climate change and sustainability impact on health, our challenges for Global Health Challenge 2023 (GHC23) have a sustainability focus. This links with the University’s strategic themes of net zero and climate, population health and wealth and equality and inclusion and also Dundee City Council’s Sustainable Dundee strategy.

Our partners for GHC23 are Dundee City Council, NHS Tayside, The Green Health Partnership, DUSA and for the first time University departments and an academic school. Participating students will get an opportunity to work with one of these organisations to design innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to tackle real challenges that are faced by individuals, families and communities.

When is GHC23 …

Launching on Wednesday 25 January, GHC23 involves a commitment over five consecutive Wednesday afternoons culminating in a Pecha Kucha session where each team will present their challenge project on Wednesday 22 February 2023.

What’s in it for me …

The Global Health Challenge is a great opportunity to learn from other students, staff and the local community, to problem solve, be creative and develop new skills. Students who’ve taken part in previous years have gone onto to complete the Elevator Accelerator programme run by the UoD Centre for Entrepreneurship to develop their concepts and solutions further. Others have gained invaluable experience through unique volunteering opportunities and been invited to present their projects and raise awareness to a variety of different audiences including senior representatives in the local tourist industry and at the University’s annual Discovery Days.

How can I take part in GHC23 …

GHC23 is open to all 2nd or 3rd year students across the University as well as BMSc students and 1st year Health Sciences students. If you’d like to take part in this year’s Global Health Challenge please tell us a little about yourself by completing our application form.   

The deadline for applications has been extended to 23:00h on Monday 12 December 2022 and we will confirm your place by 14 December. 

You can find out more about our upcoming challenges and previous Global Health Challenges and hear about the Open Ears team’s experience of doing the GHC and the idea they developed.  

If you have any queries about the application process, please email Natalie Lafferty at n.t.lafferty@dundee.ac.uk  

Creating personas and empathy mapping.

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After conversations with the groups last week, we thought it would be useful to provide you with some helpful tools in your journey towards innovation. It is important when tackling these big challenges to approach them with fresh perspectives. In order to be innovative you must firstly understand the motivations and needs of your user(s) and importantly, be able to empathise with these motivations and needs.

Personas and empathy maps are important tools in creating empathy with your user(s).      A persona is a fictional character, created through research and audience interaction, that represents a typical user for a product or service. Creating personas is a way to better understand your audience and stakeholders, allowing for specific focus on “who this is for.” Creating personas also helps to challenge existing  assumptions about users or groups along the way. Creating personas helps you to consider the motivations of your users, and focus on a human centered approach to challenges. As a group you might like to create a persona or personas shaped by your visits to your organisation and its users.

This 3 minute watch on personas provides context on what personas are; why they are important tools and how to use them…

“Personas are the handle you use to grab hold of what you learned from your research. They humanize the context, background, and motivations of your users.” Alan Cooper
To create your own personas download the Nesta Persona sheet here: https://www.nesta.org.uk/toolkit/personas/

Empathy mapping is another incredibly valuable tool in understanding users. The value of empathy mapping is that it allows you to gain a rich understanding of your users and spot new areas of opportunity.  By mapping out what users say, do, think and feel, we can begin to better understand our users and empathise with their actions and thoughts.

As a group you could discuss and map out; What did your user say? Did anything stick out as a quote or phrase? What actions and behaviors did you observe? What might your user be thinking about? What does this tell you about your user? And; what emotions might your user be feeling?

Some useful links for creating personas:

http://opendesignkit.org/methods/personas/

https://uxknowledgebase.com/creating-personas-part-1-cf1bef5b7eba

Some useful links for getting started with empathy mapping:

https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/empathy_map.html

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/making-digital-work-toolkit

https://sites.dundee.ac.uk/dundeeghc/2016/10/31/empathy-maps/

Global Health Challenge wins Herald HE Award

News

The Global Health Challenge (GHC) saw success at the Herald Higher Education Awards in Glasgow on 28th June when it was announced the winner of the Enhancing Student Learning Award.  Members of GHC co-ordinating team were delighted to receive the award from former University of Dundee Rector, Fred MacAulay.

Student feedback over the past two years has highlighted how much they love the interdisciplinary approach of the GHC and how they value and appreciate the input and support from academics and our agency partners and their clients.  Many students have commented on how the GHC has increased their connection with Dundee and given them a desire to give something back to the local community.  Working on real life problems, being able to develop their creativity and continuing to volunteer has seen the GHC develop into a rich and unique learning experience.  It’s therefore fantastic to see the GHC be recognised with the Enhancing Student Learning Award, sponsored by the Quality Assurance Agency.

The GHC co-ordinating team would like to thank all the local agencies that have contributed to the Global Health Challenge over the past two years.  The GHC and this award wouldn’t have been possible without their enthusiastic and dedicated contributions.  Thanks too to academic colleagues from across the University for their support with mentoring and sponsoring challenge projects.

We’re looking forward to our third year of the GHC and plans are underway for the launch of GHC18 in October.

 

Let’s Create a Culture of Collaboration

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“Create a Collaborative Mind-set”

– IDEO

As GHC17 problem solvers, you’ve been tasked in identifying insights and opportunities to bring about positive change for real people experiencing very real and complex issues. Key to the success of this will be teamwork.

Let’s look to IDEO co-founder David Kelly for some advice whilst working towards innovation as multidisciplinary teams:

  1. Every team member should be given the same amount of respect
  2. Take advantage of individual skill sets: throw egos out the window
  3. Embrace the opportunity afforded by bringing together people with different backgrounds and expertise – you’ll have more resources, insight, and experience to draw from

In other words, let’s create a culture of collaboration and recognise the strengths afforded to your teams brought by the various backgrounds and fields of your members. The next five weeks are yours to explore, discover and ideate and embracing the opportunity to do this together will really make your project sing.

Building on this thinking and echoing some of the advice shared by GHC16 winners Open Ears in our induction session, here are some final top tips from your GHC facilitators for successful teamwork:

  • COMMUNICATE: Establish and use somewhere central, like Facebook or the GHC webmail platform to communicate with your group. Share where you’re at and discuss progress in between meetings.
  • BE MINDFUL of the commitment you have made to the team. It is good professional practice to give this your full attention – if meetings are arranged, attend them. 
  • PROJECT PLAN & DELEGATE: Compile a task list – who does what and when?
  • PREPARE for your final presentation. Make sure every team member is clear on their role within the presentation and collect and compile visuals to communicate your project well.

Global Health Challenge 2017 is Go!

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Day one of 2017’s Global Health Challenge kicked off with vim and vigour this week as students, sponsors and staff considered challenges from eight innovative local organisations; The Archie Foundation; Deaf Links; Dundee International Women’s Centre; Faith in Community; Hearing Voices Network Dundee; PAMIS; Parkinson’s UK; and NHS Tayside Primary Care Services. Applicants from across the University’s nine schools gathered to discover, question and ruminate eight impactful challenges about health and wellbeing. Tasked with tackling issues such as awareness, stigma, and understanding, these challenges invite this year’s problem solvers to focus on being empathic and ‘walk for a little in someone else’s shoes’ to create products or tools, spaces or services that promote, support and enable healthier futures.

Working in DUSA’s Air Bar for the afternoon, the fantastic Linsay Duncan led our ice-breaker and energised us with something a little different; Northern Soul Dancing! We learned how to jump and spin and to ‘Keep on, keeping on’; valuable training in going forward over the next five weeks of the GHC as we strive to be agile, focused and dedicated in addressing the challenges posed.

Invigorated from dancing, we then heard from the eight project sponsors as they pitched and framed challenges inspired by the work they do and the real people they work with. Coming together in a BarCamp style we worked on being present, questioning our experts, contributing to discussion and generating questions and key themes to begin to explore each challenge. We worked quickly as students’ self-selected four challenges to investigate, capturing key words, themes and questions on post-its, which were then clustered together to build a picture of the problems faced. We then took some time to reflect and recap before students identified and signed up to the challenges they will work on for the duration of the GHC. The final formed groups consist of around seven members who represent various disciplines from across the University including; Art and Design, Dentistry, Education and Social Work, Humanities, Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Life Sciences, Science and Engineering and Social Sciences. These groups worked with their project sponsors to curate a set of initial questions and inquiries to drive their thinking over the next week, the aim being to begin to develop understanding of their subject area, of their group mates and of how they will work together during this creative process.

We then heard from last year’s GHC winners, Open Ears, who created a toolkit that aims to educate and raise awareness of the everyday issues experienced by people who are hard of hearing. Team members Alice, Charlie and Simran shared lessons learned and advice with this year’s cohort including; Visit your partner organisations as soon as possible to better inform understanding and collaborate with experts; Outline weekly goals and make the most of your Wednesday afternoon GHC sessions together; Communicate in between meetings using tools like Facebook; and Plan for your final presentations early as you want this to fully represent your hard work.

To close, Alice of Open Ears, shared the inspiring evolution of the team’s project since winning GHC16. Following their final presentation, Open Ears secured funding to further develop their prototype working with NHS Tayside and Deaf Hub. Through this Alice has successfully iterated the Open Ears toolkit and attained a Top 5 position in Converge Challenge 2017. This experience has not only helped to develop the toolkit to the benefit of its’ future users but also afforded Alice the opportunity to undertake entrepreneurial training and showcase the toolkit to a wider audience. There is much to be learned from Alice and her fellow Open Ears members. See Alice’s blog for more of this story: http://www.alicehorton.co.uk/

And on this particular high note, the Induction session wrapped up leaving the teams armed with inspiration and energy for their first week of GHC17.

A visual snapshot of the session:

All set for Global Health Challenge 2017

General, News

Following the success of the 2016 Global Health Challenge (GHC) we’re ready to get started with a set of new challenges for GHC17.  It’s fair to say we were overwhelmed by the creativity, energy and inspiration of our students to tackle the six challenges set last year and we’re  excited to see how this year’s challenge projects develop.

We’re delighted to see some of last year’s project sponsors, Deaf Links, Hearing Voices and PAMIS join us again with a fresh set of challenges.  It’s also great to welcome five new project sponsors, the Archie Foundation, Dundee International Women’s Centre, Faith in Community, Parkinson’s UK and NHS Tayside Primary Care Services.  With eight challenges this year there’s an opportunity for more students take part.

GHC17 kicks off on 18 October when our project sponsors will present their challenges to our students.  Following the short challenge pitches, students will get an opportunity to dig a little deeper into each of them and outline the key questions that relate to them.  They’ll then get an opportunity to see the outputs of each groups’ discussions before deciding which challenge they want to work on.  Once the teams have formed and started to outline the first steps of their projects they’ll get the chance to hear from one of GHC16’s teams, Open Ears.  Working with the Deaf Hub, Open Ears went on to develop a practical simulation kit to be used as a part of basic face-to-face awareness training with medical and frontline staff across a wide range of services.  We’ll be posting more about Open Ears in the next few days.

We’ll be posting an update following our launch event tomorrow and further updates over the next five weeks of the the GHC17. In the meantime to find out more about the GHC17 challenges browse the links on our 2017 challenges page.

 

Curious Minds

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Venturing into the unknown

Wednesday 16th October 2016 was an auspicious day at Dundee University. All nine Schools from across the campus came together for the first time, committed to looking at new ways of working to solve some of the most pressing health and social care challenges of our time. With 36 fresh thinking students from Art and Design, Dentistry, Education and Social Work, Humanities, Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Life Sciences, Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, and support from six local organisations – Amino, Deaf Hub, DialOp, Hearing Voices, Homeless Populations and PAMIS – we ventured forward as a new, ambitious collective!

We pitched up at the School of Art & Design in the heart of the campus, and used the BarCamp method to kick-start our work. Why BarCamp? It is an ‘unconference‘; a meeting where everyone can contribute, where everyone can present a topic and generate a discussion (Azzimonti et al, 2015). Mindful that people would be meeting each other for the first time, and had no previous experience of working together, our aim for Day 1 of the project was simple: to enable everyone to develop an understanding of the project, as well as an understanding of each other and the creative process about to be undertaken.

The subject demands agility, critical thinking and teamwork; the project is time sensitive (with only four sessions out with the induction) and so, in setting the scene we talked about the importance of curiosity – of accepting we don’t have all of the answers, of venturing into the unknown together, and leading the navigation into unchartered waters with questions.

With jazz playing in the background, 6 hours of dynamic conversation and questioning pursued, ending in six self selecting teams to work on an issue of their choice and with an organisation of their choice.  Here’s a visual snapshot of Day 1 #UoDGHC16 :

GHC Blog Image_day 1