Impact

The primary goals of our program are to:

  1. Help relieve the burden many instructors face in trying to develop curricula on their own
  2. Create an international community of instructors that can work collaboratively rather than in isolation as one of few at their own institutions
  3. Increase the impact of our program on the improvement of biostatistical capacity building in Africa

Evidence that the program is achieving these goals can be seen in the following:

Co-development of courses: for each of the three courses we have offered thus far, the faculty fellows have left the training with a syllabus, full set of lecture materials, assignments, and grading rubrics that they are then able to adapt as needed to their local setting. In the case of the most recent two courses (“Data Management” and “Complex Survey Analysis”) the fellows have worked together to finalize the syllabus and lecture materials so that they are already adapted to the African setting prior to leaving the workshop.

Improving knowledge in course content and pedagogy as well as confidence in teaching: the faculty fellows content knowledge from the beginning of the week-long workshop to the end, increased on average an impressive 20 percentage points. Every single faculty member reported increased confidence in their ability to teach.

Network of faculty: faculty members from the second cohort have traveled to each other’s institutions to help to co-teach the course. When unable to travel, they support each other by helping to provide feedback on students’ assignments and providing feedback to faculty on how they can best adapt the course to their site.

Reaching hundreds of students across sub-Saharan Africa: the Monitoring & Evaluation course has now been offered to students eight times, reaching over 300 students. Faculty from Universities outside of our network have also attended the course, so that they can be better prepared to teach this topic at their home institutions! The Data Management course has already been offered at six sites, reaching over 150 people, with additional plans to offer the course in January 2020.