Instructor Insights

Instructor Insights pages are part of the OCW Educator initiative, which seeks to enhance the value of OCW for educators.

Course Overview

This page focuses on the course 15.ES718 Global Health Innovation: Delivering Targeted Advice to an Organization in the Field as it was taught by Dr. Anjali Sastry during Spring 2015.

During this three-day intensive workshop, graduate students get a broad introduction to global health issues, and focus on the challenges in health care delivery posed by a particular non-governmental organization in India.

Course Outcomes

Course Goals for Students

  • Learn about topics in the global mental health field
  • Deliver something of value to a partner organization
  • Iterate over three days with feedback from faculty, experts, and partner organization
  • Develop networking skills and explore our campus
  • Become wise consumers of information

Possibilities for Further Study/Careers

Students in the course have often already determined a career path, but many retain interest in the field of global health after taking the course.

 

Instructor Insights

… from a global perspective the number of people who don't have access to mental health care who need it is huge … I think it's motivating for students to realize that what we are looking at are current, existing, pressing challenges.

 —Dr. Anjali Sastry

In the following pages, Dr. Sastry describes various aspects of planning, teaching, and running 15.ES718 Global Health Innovation.

 

Curriculum Information

Prerequisites

No previous coursework required. Open to current MIT students only.

Requirements Satisfied

This course fulfills the Sloan Innovation Period (SIP) elective requirement.

Offered

This course is offered every Spring semester; topics vary.

The Classroom

  • A tiered classroom with sliding chalkboards, a small table at the front for the instructor, and 2 ceiling-mounted projectors.

    Room 1 of 1

    Seminar

    The course was taught in a medium-sized classroom (capacity of 80) with tiered seating, chalkboards, 2 video projectors, and video conferencing. Breakout rooms were also used.

 

Student Information

On average, about 20 students take this course when it is offered.

Breakdown by Year

First-year graduate students

Breakdown by Major

MBAs

Typical Student Background

This is a graduate level MBA class, so each student had already completed Sloan's first semester of core courses.

How Student Time Was Spent

This workshop consisted of three intensive, back-to-back days of research and collaboration. See the Activities section for details about how each day was spent.

 

Course Team Roles

Lead Instructor (Dr. Anjali Sastry)

As the course instructor, Dr. Sastry performed the classroom teaching and the grading for the course. She led the planning and running of the course. The course instructor mentors the student teams. She also takes care of of recruiting, working with, and following up with the panel of experts and the host organization..

Expert Panel

A team of experts was available to talk with students during designated timeslots. Experts included those from academia, as well as startup founders and CEOs at Dimagi, mPower, ginger.io, Centre for Affordable Healthcare Technology at Oxford University, MGH Center for Global Health’s CamTECH Consortium, Partners in Health, MIT Media Lab, the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard, eHealth Systems and more. Students were required to read bios of the experts and sign up for meeting times with them, as well as with the instructor.

Teaching Assistant

There was no official TA for the workshop, but the instructur had some assistance with logistics from a student doing in an independent study.