Educating in antimicrobial resistance awareness: adaptation of the Small World Initiative program to service-learning

Abstract

The Small World Initiative (SWI) is a consolidated and successful education program rooted in the USA that tackles the antibiotic crisis by a crowdsourcing strategy. Based on active learning, it challenges young students to discover novel bioactive-producing microorganisms form environmental soil samples. Besides its pedagogical efficiency to impart Microbiology contents in academic curricula, SWI promotes vocations on research and development in Experimental Sciences and, at the same time, disseminates the antibiotic awareness guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO). We have adapted the SWI program to the Spanish academic environment by a pioneering hierarchic strategy based on service-learning that involves two education levels (higher education and high school) with different degrees of responsibility. Along the academic year, 23 SWI teams each consisting of 3–7 undergraduate students led by one faculty member have coordinated off-campus programs in 22 local high schools, involving 597 secondary/high school students as researchers. Post-survey-based evaluation of the program reveals a satisfactory achievement of goals: acquiring scientific abilities and general or personal competencies by university students, as well as promoting academic decisions to inspire vocations for science- and technology-oriented degrees in younger students, and successfully communicating scientific culture in antimicrobial resistance to a young stratum of society.