Evaluation of the innovative, interdisciplinary, experiential learning opportunities EPSRC Our Health offer

Evaluation of the innovative, interdisciplinary, experiential learning opportunities EPSRC Our Health offers for undergraduate, postgraduate and articulating students.

School:  Chemistry

Team Members:  Helen Szoor-McElhinney, Alette Willis

Abstract

EPSRC Our Health is an innovative Community-University Interdisciplinary Research Programme that offers rich experiential learning opportunities to university undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to tackle real world research questions, which are posed by local and global community partners.   This programme aims to play a role in tackling the health inequalities that exist in society by working in partnership and using participatory action research to improve health literacy and enable positive health outcomes.

As part of this, we are aiming to widen access to the programme by working with the University’s Widening Participation service and Edinburgh College to explore a possible articulation route (within the School of Health in Social Science), which would support college students to articulate to university programmes via Our Health projects. EPSRC Our Health now requires a concrete evidence base provided by a robust and independent evaluation of students’ current experiential learning as well as that of future students who we are proposing to support as they join the university through this new strand of widening access. This evidence base will allow the programme to improve the learning opportunities that are offered, as well as provide a strong foundation for other learning and teaching innovations created by colleagues who wish to build on the pioneering work of EPSRC Our Health.

Final report

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