On-Line Project-Based Learning on Healthcare Technologies Against Epidemic Diseases: A COVID-19 Case Study

Quality technical education on healthcare technologies is still inaccessible to young adults in low-resource settings due to high costs, low-tech environments, and gaps in learning materials. The online and open-source collaborative Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology intends to introduce early-career engineers into the development of healthcare technologies by allowing students from all around the world, regardless of background or place of origin, to engage in collaborative design methods, the use of open-source resources and learning experiences from experts in the field. This paper discusses a case study in which the aforementioned methodology was implemented, the "COVID-19 Innovation Competition and Design Bootcamp 2020", which brought together 105 participants from 22 countries, mostly in Africa, to conceptualize the design of 10 medical devices in two weeks for an integral management of the COVID-19 pandemic that is applicable to other infectious disease outbreaks. The presented experience demonstrates that highly formative virtual PBL experiences can be carried out, in a cost-effective way and in connection with real societal needs, for which remarkable solutions can be found, by virtue of multidisciplinary and international cooperation. Our findings demonstrate that even if it is difficult to reach the degree of project completion achievable with longer-term and on-site design-build experiences, on-line PBL has been shown to promote students' professional skills in an effective way.