Crowdsourcing: A novel tool to elicit the student voice in the curriculum design process for an undergraduate diagnostic radiography degree programme.

INTRODUCTION: Stakeholder participation in healthcare curriculum design is an important aspect of higher education with stakeholders including students, staff members, clinical partners, healthcare organisations, patients and members of the public. Significantly, student co-creation, of the curriculum, has become increasingly important. Yet there is limited research which addresses how to engage this group in design processes. METHODS: This paper represents the first phase of a three stage action research spiral whereby the authors evaluated the use of a novel tool for curriculum design processes, anonymised crowdsourcing. This initial phase was open to all students enrolled on an undergraduate diagnostic radiography programme in the UK. To confirm the reliability of the crowdsource design an established eight point crowdsourcing verification tool was applied. RESULTS: Twenty-three unique ideas were generated by participants, 40 comments made and 173 votes cast. Inductive analysis of the comments generated five themes. These included: the role of technology enhanced learning; simulation activities; patient focused curriculum; mental wealth (resilience) authentic assessment approaches. An evaluation of those who had and had not engaged highlighted areas of improvement for the administration of the second and third iterations which will include a wider pool of participants. CONCLUSION: This study from a single programme offers lessons for others wishing to adopt and develop this approach elsewhere. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Several ideas elicited by the crowdsource have been considered by the curriculum design team and will be implemented in the 2020 curriculum thus demonstrating the impact on local education practice of this research approach.

Crowdsourcing in health professions education: What radiography educators can learn from other disciplines.

OBJECTIVES: Crowdsourcing works through an institution outsourcing a function normally performed by an employee or group of individuals. Within a crowdsource users, known as the crowd, form a community who voluntarily undertake a task which involves the pooling of knowledge resources. A literature review was undertaken to identify how the tool is being used in health professions education, and potential for use in radiography education. KEY FINDINGS: 17 papers were returned. Literature identified was assessed against an established crowdsourcing definition. Reviewing these yielded four themes for discussion: student selection procedures, lesson planning, teaching materials and assessment. CONCLUSION: Crowdsourcing is associated with innovative activities through collective solution seeking via a large network of users. It is increasingly being adopted in healthcare training and maybe transferable to educational activities within the field of radiography education.