Digital approaches are increasingly common in clinical trial recruitment, retention, analysis, and dissemination. Community engagement processes have contributed to the successful implementation of clinical trials and are crucial in enhancing equity in trials. However, few studies focus on how digital approaches can be implemented to enhance community engagement in clinical trials. This narrative review examines three key areas for digital approaches to deepen community engagement in clinical trials-the use of digital technology for trial processes to decentralize trials, digital crowdsourcing to develop trial components, and digital qualitative research methods. We highlight how digital approaches enhanced community engagement through a greater diversity of participants, and deepened community engagement through the decentralization of research processes. We discuss new possibilities that digital technologies offer for community engagement, and highlight potential strengths, weaknesses, and practical considerations. We argue that strengthening community engagement using a digital approach can enhance equity and improve health outcomes. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-022-00581-1.pdf

Digital approaches to enhancing community engagement in clinical trials

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educational activities had to be done remotely as a way to avoid the spread of the disease. What happened was not exactly a shift to an online learning model but a transition to a new approach called Emergency Remote Teaching. It is a temporary strategy to keep activities going on until it is safe again to return to the physical facilities of universities. This new setting became a challenge to both teachers and students. The lack of interaction and classroom socialization became obstacles for students to continue engaged. Before the pandemic, hackathons -- short-lived events (1 to 3 days) where participants intensively collaboration to develop software prototypes -- were starting to be explored as an alternative venue to engage students in acquiring and practicing technical skills. In this paper, we present an experience report on the usage of an online hackathon as a resource to engage students in the development of their semester project in a distributed applications course during this emergency remote teaching period. We describe details of the intervention and present an analysis of the students' perspective of the approach. One of the important findings was the efficient usage of the Discord communication tool -- already used by all students while playing games -- which helped them socialize and keep them continuously engaged in synchronous group work, "virtually collocated".

Online Hackathons as an Engaging Tool to Promote Group Work in Emergency Remote Learning

China has low seasonal influenza vaccination rates among priority populations. In this study, we aimed to evaluate a pay-it-forward strategy to increase influenza vaccine uptake in rural, suburban, and urban settings in China.We performed a quasi-experimental pragmatic trial to examine the effectiveness of a pay-it-forward intervention (a free influenza vaccine and an opportunity to donate financially to support vaccination of other individuals) to increase influenza vaccine uptake compared with standard-of-care user-paid vaccination among children (aged between 6 months and 8 years) and older people (≥60 years) in China. Recruitment took place in the standard-of-care group until the expected sample size was reached and then in the pay-it-forward group in primary care clinics from a rural site (Yangshan), a suburban site (Zengcheng), and an urban site (Tianhe). Participants were introduced to the influenza vaccine by project staff using a pamphlet about influenza vaccination and were either asked to pay out-of-pocket at the standard market price (US$8·5-23·2; standard-of-care group) or to donate any amount anonymously (pay-it-forward group). Participants had to be eligible to receive an influenza vaccine and to have not received an influenza vaccine in the past year. The primary outcome was vaccine uptake. Secondary outcomes were vaccine confidence and costs (from the health-care provider perspective). Regression methods compared influenza vaccine uptake and vaccine confidence between the two groups. This trial is registered with ChiCTR, ChiCTR2000040048.From Sept 21, 2020, to March 3, 2021, 300 enrolees were recruited from patients visiting three primary care clinics. 55 (37%) of 150 people in the standard-of-care group (40 [53%] of 75 children and 15 [20%] of 75 older adults) and 111 (74%) of 150 in the pay-it-forward group (66 [88%] of 75 children and 45 [60%] of 75 older adults) received an influenza vaccine. People in the pay-it-forward group were more likely to receive an influenza vaccine compared with those in the standard-of-care group (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 6·7 [95% CI 2·7-16·6] among children and 5·0 [2·3-10·8] among older adults). People in the pay-it-forward group had greater confidence in vaccine safety (aOR 2·2 [95% CI 1·2-3·9]), importance (3·1 [1·6-5·9]), and effectiveness (3·1 [1·7-5·7]). In the pay-it-forward group, 107 (96%) of 111 participants donated money for subsequent vaccinations. The pay-it-forward group had a lower economic cost (calculated as the cost without subtraction of donations) per person vaccinated (US$45·60) than did the standard-of-care group ($64·67).The pay-it-forward intervention seemed to be effective in improving influenza vaccine uptake and community engagement. Our data have implications for prosocial interventions to enhance influenza vaccine uptake in countries where influenza vaccines are available for a fee.Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK National Institute for Health Research. 

http://www.thelancet.com/article/S1473309922003462/pdf

Effectiveness of a pay-it-forward intervention compared with user-paid vaccination to improve influenza vaccine uptake and community engagement among children and older adults in China: a quasi-experimental pragmatic trial

There are several ways in making learning activities more engaging and interesting to computer science students. In addition to traditional higher education (curriculum, project-based approaches, lectures, labs), we consider competitive approaches such as hackathons to develop hard and soft skills. Computer science education needs to change requirements for hard and soft skills. In order hard skills university CS education has to capture the changes behind the trends, such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, etc. Developing soft skills is important teamwork, end-user awareness, collaboration, etc. This study aims to present the various ways to implement hackathons in the context of CS education. We also present a taxonomy of hackathons based on our experiences and observations from 2016 to the present. We aim to share our lessons learned on the following issues: (1) How can hackathons be designed in CS education to teach students necessary skills and competencies; (2) what kinds of programming projects monitoring and evaluation we need during hackathons.

https://acnsci.org/journal/index.php/etq/article/download/5/5

Hackathons in computer science education: monitoring and evaluation of programming projects

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic prohibited radically the collocation and face-to-face interactions of participants in coding bootcamps and similar experiences, which are key characteristics that help participants to advance technical work. Several specific issues are faced and need to be solved when running online coding camps, which can achieve the same level of positive outcomes for participants. One of such issues is how to keep the same level of fun that participants obtained through physical activities and interactions in the face-to-face settings. In this paper, we report on our experience and insights gained from designing and running a fully remote coding camp that exposes high school students to Agile-based Software Engineering practices to enhance their ability to develop high-quality software. To design the online coding camp, we adapted the face-to-face version of the coding camp to keep the same "level of fun", i.e., adaptations aimed at increasing communication, engaging participants, and introducing fun items to reduce fatigue due to prolonged computer use, while preserving the technical curriculum that enables students to attain the learning goals originally planned. The comparison with the results of the face-to-face coding camp shows that we succeeded in keeping the fun alive in the online edition, and the participants of online camp were able to produce the results at the same level of quality in terms of product and process as in the face-to-face edition. From our experience, we synthesize lessons learned, and we sketch some guidelines for educators.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3510456.3514153

Keeping Fun Alive: an Experience Report on Running Online Coding Camps

What are the new findings? ►► The COVID-19 pandemic prevented physical innovation formats and virtual innovation strategies such as the virtual hackathon proposed in this article may address this challenge ►► Virtual interdisciplinary collaboration between students and early career professionals can ead to rapid innovations to address urgent unmet clinical needs in times of global emergencies How might it impact on healthcare in the future? ►► Innovation pathways should be augmented with virtual innovation strategies to break down barriers to engagement in healthcare innovation, improve global interdisciplinary collaboration and enhance rapid innovation adoption moving into the future ►► Particular healthcare technologies likely to be positively impacted by this include those in digital health, global health and medical device sectors © 2021 Georg Thieme Verlag All rights reserved

https://innovations.bmj.com/content/bmjinnov/7/2/284.full.pdf

James Kinch

Papers

Virtual hackathon to tackle COVID-19 unmet needs