STRIPED’s Approach to Teaching Cases

Learn more about STRIPED’s unique approach to case-method teaching in “Closing the ‘know-do’ gap: Training public health professionals in eating disorders prevention via case-method teaching” by STRIPED Director Bryn Austin and Collaborating Mentor Kendrin Sonneville.

Watch as Dr. Bryn Austin and STRIPED Program Manager, Erin Gibson, speak about their experience transforming our teaching case, “‘Who’s Calling Me Fat?’ Or, How Columbia Got Its Obesity Prevention Campaign Back on Track,” into an e-course that was then pilot-tested and evaluated with public health professionals and graduate students across the U.S. They also speak about the process of developing a workshop titled, “Challenges and Opportunities in Designing and Implementing Case-based Learning in the Online Space,” that brought together individuals from a range of disciplines across Harvard who are interested in bringing case method learning online.

With the support of the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching and a Harvard Chan School Curriculum Innovation grant, the teaching case “Retweet Does Not Imply Endorsement” was transformed into the first of our e-learning modules. Our second e-module with the case “Who’s Calling Me Fat?” was supported by the Harvard Initiative for Teaching and Learning, the Association of Teachers of Maternal and Child Health, and the National Adolescent and Young Adults Health Network. To develop our e-modules, we work closely with instructional designer Megan Kipp of Bloom Learning Design to ensure they incorporate state-of-the-art evidence-based teaching strategies from the fast-growing fields of online education.

STRIPED is working on developing a new e-learning module to transform our teaching case “Coloring the Narrative”. With the support of the Harvard Institute for Learning and Teaching, STRIPED hosted a ½ day workshop at Harvard, bringing together over 30 instructional designers, faculty, and other education professionals to share wisdom on how to create engaging and effective online courses using teaching cases. We then focused all that talent in the room on dreaming up creative approaches to transform our case “Coloring the Narrative” into an online course. Now past the proof-of-concept stage, we are excited to work with STRIPED Fellow Ayesha McAdams-Mahmoud and India-based eating disorders specialist Kritika Tiwari to create the first online course for adolescent health professionals in India to take on this critical body image issue.

As we continue to develop our curriculum of online courses, our goal is to make them available to public health professionals around the globe to greatly enhance the capacity for eating disorders prevention in the field.