Experiential learning experience in global health projects through design thinking

SIGHT (Student Innovation for Global Health Technology) is an undergraduate education platform at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) launched in October 2014. In SIGHT, experiential learning is used as a key component to promote cross-disciplinary competencies, creative problem solving, and global citizenship. With the motto “Simple Technology, Big Difference”, SIGHT transform student innovations into tangible solutions for global health problems in low-resource communities. This paper will review the pedagogies used to drive the projects, coach students and provide experiential learning experiences during the project cycle. It will focus on the project EasyMed as an example. Both qualitative (focus groups, student) and quantitative (pre/post surveys) approaches are utilized. In general, students showed a tendency to rate themselves higher in the post survey on “Cultivate Global Citizenship / Global Vision”, “Cultural Sensitivity/Awareness” than in the pre survey. Qualitative and Quantitative results have further discussed in the section “Results and Discussion”.