Student learning enhanced by purpose-built DialogueSpace

October 4, 2010 – Students taking courses affiliated with the McMaster Health Forum are now using the state-of-the-art DialogueSpace in the Forum’s new purpose-built venue at Mills Memorial Library to enhance their learning experience.

The Forum’s Simulations course (HTH SCI 4YY3) and the Law & Disorder in Global Health course (HTH SCI 4LD3) each have about 25 students who are able to take advantage of the multi-purpose, technology-enabled venue that is designed to support and facilitate collective problem-solving.

This is the first time the Law & Disorder class has been offered, and the Simulations course was launched in the 2009-2010 academic year. Both courses are part of the Forum’s mandate to provide outstanding training to the health systems leaders of the future.

The Law & Disorder class, taught by Forum adjunct faculty member Steve Hoffman, focuses on contemporary issues and debates in global health governance from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students examine the historical development of global health, its regulatory framework, coordinating mechanisms and emerging challenges.

Hoffman was a Forum Fellow in 2009. He has a law degree and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Toronto, and also graduated from the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Hons.) program at McMaster.

For more information on the course, click here.

The Simulations course gives students the chance to participate in simulated hospital board meetings, cabinet meetings, and World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board meetings, and interact with decision makers. Students are given the opportunity to see how difficult decisions are made, and experience the pressures that come to bear on the decision makers.

In its first year, the course was taught by John Lavis, director of the Forum. This semester it is being taught by Jessica Shearer, who is in the second year of McMaster’s Health Policy PhD program. She earned her M.H.Sc. degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is a graduate of McMaster’s Arts & Science Program, and was awarded the Harry Lyman Hooker Senior Fellowship from McMaster in 2009.

For more information on the Simulations course, click here.

In the new year, Hoffman's Politics and Praxis of Global Health Advocacy course will also be taught in the DialogueSpace. It aims to foster an understanding of the complexity of today’s most pressing global health challenges and the ways that various actors work to overcome them.

The students who took the inaugural course in the Winter 2010 term published an edited volume of research offering a student perspective on five global health issues.

For more details on the course, click here.