P1 Communicating Health: Encouraging Critical Reflection through Online-Based, Community-Driven Student Engagement

Presenters

Vinita Agarwal, Communication

Abstract

Health communication professionals are challenged to employ critical thinking skills in contexts that range from information gathering, message creation and dissemination, and behavior change implementation in socially just, ethical ways. Creating a learning environment that supports student critical reflection and in-depth engagement with the knowledge-base of the field is central to achieving this goal. A key pedagogical challenge lies in supporting student ability to grasp community needs through employing a community-of-learning, participatory- knowledge-generation and action-implementation communication approach. This presentation will identify the challenges and successes in articulating critical thinking through course design and student engagement in the COMM 341 Health Communication course. It will present how considerations of integrating reflective thought and its connection with action sought to center the student and be mindful of eschewing top-down, expert-centered models of student and community empowerment. It will discuss the strengths of an online, synchronous learning environment with the challenges of student implementation of community-based projects that address the health needs of the vulnerable and marginalized during a time of social isolation. Specifically, the presentation will center on the development of the following two main points. First, it will provide a glimpse into the joys and challenges of guiding student gaze to purposeful, self-generated application of theoretically gleaned insights from their own lives through peer discussion, reading reflections, and interpretive analysis. Second, it will describe the (partial) successes achieved toward the course goal of cultivating a relational, interactive classroom learning process centered on individual engagement. The challenges involved in strengthening field-based, local perspectives that also straddle objective principles while drawing upon experiential subjective, on-the-ground engagement are identified. The presentation invites the viewer to consider how the online classroom can cultivate a meaningful synthesis of disciplinary knowledge and lived student reflection for designing and implementing meaningful community health promotion communication efforts.

Pre-Recorded Session

Discussion

Join us for an active discussion about Communicating Health.