Student group’s challenge

“Eventually, students moved their problem to working with postpartum depression among women giving birth. The problem was that women are often diagnosed too late with postpartum depression, and they (women) should be diagnosed earlier when they experience depression symptoms. […] Then you always have one or two students who suggest an idea direction. So, you always have students who are more proactive and come up with an idea. The rest of the group then thinks about that suggested idea, and when a student has suggested a nice idea, and the rest sees the benefits of it, then the students dive deeper into the idea. So, at the moment that the suggested idea seems like a good fit, then the students—as a group—put their shoulders to the wheel. The students unanimously express themselves in favor of the new idea. […] It is often that an idea comes from one student. So, perhaps, it is better to state that students ultimately come up with the idea. And these students are often the more articulate types, the ones who are more dominant in the discussion. And the quieter ones, they can critically investigate the idea. They (quieter students) can also come up with good input, but my impression is that they (quieter types) come up with an idea less quickly. Do the quieter students take over those ideas? Yes, the quieter types will probably do further research on the proposed idea and often conclude that it is a good idea. At the moment that quieter types do not agree with the proposed idea, they (quieter types) will also say something about it. […] Eventually, one student brings up the idea that students continue with. In the beginning, multiple students can propose ideas, but you often see that there is one or two students who propose ideas. Eventually, the group chooses for one of those proposed ideas. And the quieter students, who do potentially just as useful work in a team setting, are then a bit less present. […] For the problem of diagnosing postpartum depression earlier among women, an app has been proposed as a solution. In this app, women would receive a questionnaire every few weeks to examine if there are symptoms of postpartum depression. […] What do you think of the idea of an app? There is often room for innovation through an app, but its attractiveness depends very much on the target group. For example, if you work with weakened cachexia patients, you should not come up with an app. In contrast, another target group, is a generation that often has their phone in their hands, like young women who just had children. For this target group, an application is an easier route than e-mail. So, attractiveness of an app as solution depends very much on your target group” [T8 diagnosis postpartum depression].

Teaching activities

“I mainly ask a lot of questions of course. I also let students explain to me the need for an app and how it is linked to innovation. I keep asking the students how stakeholders elsewhere try to solve this problem. For example, how is it done in other countries? Is it worse regulated in the Netherlands than in other countries or is it everywhere the same? Do you think that women will fill in the questionnaire, or how often do you think women will fill in the questionnaire? […] I noticed that I take a more critical stance towards wild ideas that students came up with and from which I think that it is not going to happen. […] I think students can better work out a smaller innovation really well and implement it in practice, instead of having grand plans that are not realistic at all. So, I noticed that I often steer students towards smaller innovations that are feasible and applicable. An example of this is this group that eventually came up with a small innovation. […] It was actually an existing questionnaire that the students copied, and the students wanted to conduct this questionnaire more often among women. [..] The students even wanted to implement the questionnaire after the innovation project. But then—as a student—you do not want to keep making improvements to the questionnaire. Therefore, I was very critical towards students and ultimately encouraged students to take an existing and validated questionnaire that they would repeat over time, because that is more feasible. This was also done in agreement with the stakeholders. […] The students also received feedback during a workshop in the innovation project. […] The supervisor of that workshop did not think that their innovation (repeating questionnaire) was very sexy. And, of course, I agree with that, and that is of course a consequence of the process. So, I look very critically at what is really feasible, and what can be carried out by students” [T8 diagnosing postpartum depression].