Student blogs

-I participated in the Gapminder Survey, a global health knowledge survey, and i hope that i scored are better than a chimpanzee-

Being one of the best life sciences universities in the world should have exposed us into the latest research, newest finding, and cutting-edge innovations that will help you to understand (and hopefully to solve) most of the health problems globally, right? However, that is not always the case as some research showed that only a few people know the basic global fact. And that is exactly what KI was going to uncover when releasing a survey not so long ago.

KI maintains its position as one of the world’s best university. Picture credit to Tetiana Poliakova

The survey was based on the basic global facts knowledge that should have been known by KI students. Participation meant free lunch and a chance to win the Factfulness book signed officially by the famous Rosling family. I helped during the survey data collection period and tried the survey myself.

The survey was released on three occasions, to ensure the coverage and representation of students. The first one took place on November 19^th, 2018 in KI Flemingsberg complex. The latter two were held on November 22^nd and 30^th in KI Solna. The survey consisted of 20 questions in total to test your knowledge on several important global health indicators and how the English language was used in the teaching process at KI. In the end around 400 responses were collected!

KI students actively participating on day 1 of the survey. Photo credit to Karen Gustafsson

This got more interesting that when I learned that the survey was based on the Ignorance Project from Gapminder Foundation, initiated by the late Prof. Hans Rosling.

The first survey was released in around year 2006, which is surprising that the KI students participating scored worse when compared to the answers from the chimpanzee, as to represent random answers. Even when the survey was replicated to the professors, their score did not excelled the chimpanzees’ as well. It was not meant to be insulting, but the results showed that there were some preconceived ideas that created in a systematic way that grwoth ignorance to the rapid health improvement in other parts of our world. The results also served as the basis for evaluating any knowledge-gaps existed and to encourage improvement in the education process. You can read more of it here.

So, hopefully, my answer (and you who participated also) would be better than the random-chimpanzee-ones. Also, the chance of getting a hand on the Factfulness book is an opportunity not to be missed.

Anyway, the take-home message here is that KI continuously implements methods to improve its way of providing better education to its students. Then, it is up to us who already admitted to fully harness the opportunity. For you who are still figuring out where will you continue your study, then KI should be on your top priority.

Until next post!

Contact me at:

Email: winner.ng@stud.ki.se

LinkedIn: Winner Ng