Course creation as a response to intersecting pandemics: Enhancing students’ abilities to leverage and mobilize an occupational perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, as did calls to bring an occupational perspective to an evolving situation. However, the role of occupation-focused education in facilitating responses to the global crisis was missing from this dialogue. This paper aims to address that gap by describing the development of a new course delivered at the University of Southern California in 2020 and 2021. Grounded in occupational science, this special topics course aimed to meet various teaching and learning needs for the post-professional occupational therapy doctorate program. This paper describes how the focus, format, and content of the course developed through a backward design approach to address topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and intersecting, ongoing crises of structural racism and health and social inequalities. The primary course assignment, a knowledge mobilization product, provided students novel opportunities to leverage their occupational perspectives in response to emergent issues. The paper concludes by addressing three interrelated topics: the importance of institutional mechanisms that facilitate responsive educational innovations; the need to track the teaching and learning impacts of such innovations; and how such innovations reflect the importance of occupational science education.