Sandra Darfour-Oduro brings teamwork and collaboration into her Global Health class.
Sandra Darfour-Oduro, assistant professor of public health, brought hands-on learning into her Global Health course through a workshop designed to strengthen her students’ collaboration, communication, understanding, and teamwork skills.
The activities’ goals included:
- Strengthening collaboration and teamwork
- Practicing effective communication and group decision-making
- Understanding the importance of listening to and valuing everyone’s perspectives
- Reflecting on ways teams can improve their approach to working together
For the workshop, “Purposeful Playful Collaboration and Teams,” Darfour-Oduro welcomed Daniella Alonzo Lopez from Ʒ’s Center for Design Thinking to work with her students in the Global Health class.
The students were first divided into groups, and each group was asked to build the tallest tower possible using Brain Flakes toys. Before beginning, students discussed and developed a strategy for approaching the challenge and achieving their goal. After completing their towers, the students shared their experiences and discussed what worked well within their groups and what they could have improved to build a taller tower. This reflection encouraged students to look beyond the success of their final outcomes and consider how their approach, communication, and teamwork influenced the results.
Darfour-Oduro shared that the workshop was designed to prepare students for group projects in the Global Health class. For the project, each student will be assigned a country and will work in groups organized according to the World Health Organization (WHO) regions.
The workshop emphasized the importance of skills that extend beyond the classroom and into the field of global health, where addressing complex health challenges often require individuals with diverse perspectives and experiences to collaborate toward a shared goal.