CBL In West Africa

Universities across the African continent face a significant challenge in improving and tailoring the relevance of higher health science education towards the needs of changing healthcare systems. There is a need to invest in capacity strengthening for local teaching staff to equip staff with the skills to develop and teach transdisciplinarity and competency-based curricula. While CBL has its roots in Western educational traditions, particularly in the United States where it was developed as an evolution of problem-based and project-based learning (Appl Inc, 2008; Nicholes Et al., 2016), it is increasingly being adopted in non-Western contexts, including middle-income countries such as Mexico and China (Van den Beemt, 2023). The CBL approach aligns with CAPSTONE’s main objective “to strengthen capacities of HEIs in Ghana and The Gambia, and eventually in neighbouring SSA countries, to develop and implement curricula that train participants in transdisciplinary, challenge-based approaches and skills required to address complex global problems in the field of NCDs to improve NCD health care delivery”.

Research on teachers’ perspectives on CBL

As the effectiveness and adaptation of CBL in different socio-economic and cultural settings may vary due to differences in resources, teaching traditions, and institutional support, for the integration of a CBL approach it is important to have a solid understanding of the teachers’ perspectives in relation to CBL. We have therefore added a research component to CAPSTONE with the aim of gaining insights into teachers’ perspectives on CBL, specifically for education on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) taking place in higher education institutes in Ghana and The Gambia. We focus on four aspects: 1) CBL values, 2) current activities, 3) CBL development needs, and 4) support for those needs, specifically for education on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Data will be collected through a survey and additional interviews of teachers, health workers and program managers of education on non-communicable diseases. The results will allow for CBL integration in NCD education in alignment with the teachers’ goals and strategies to enable the health workforce of the future to tackle NCDs most effectively.

Free CBL material for teachers

Are you teaching on NCDs and would you like to integrate the CBL method in your teaching? Feel free to use our materials. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to Faith Agbozo or Judith van de Kamp (see team page).