Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Among Teacher Education, Health and Social Care Students in a Large Scaled Blended Learning Course

Abstract

Kari Almendingen,1 Bente Sparboe-Nilsen,1 Lisbeth Gravdal Kvarme,1 Jurate Saltyte Benth2,3 1Department of Nursing and Health Promotion, Faculty of Health Sciences, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway; 2Institute of Clinical Medicine, Campus Ahus, University of Oslo, Blindern, Norway; 3Health Services Research Unit, Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, NorwayCorrespondence: Kari AlmendingenDepartment of Nursing and Health Promotion, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University, P.O. Box 4 St. Olavs plass, NO-0130, Oslo, NorwayTel [phone]Email [email protected]: Society’s demands for better coordination of services for children are increasing. Interprofessional learning (IPL) has been suggested to achieve the triple aim of better services, better outcomes and reduced costs. The aims were to assess 1) to what extent students taking teacher education, health and social care programmes agreed that blended learning was a suitable approach in a mandatory IPL course, 2) to what extent they had learnt about the WHO’s core IPL competencies (roles and responsibilities, values and ethics, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork), and 3) the students’ ranking of the learning outcomes from different components of the IPL course.Methods: This was a quantitative cross-sectional study. Students completed an online course evaluation after a two-day combination of online and face-to-face IPL small-group training.Findings: The response rate was 25.8% (n=363). Among the students, 60.6% strongly agreed that blended learning was suitable, while 8.9% strongly disagreed. Among the respondents, 46.8%, 50.2%, 56.8% and 62.3% gained increased insight into roles and responsibilities, values and ethics, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork, respectively. In ascending order, students were most satisfied with the learning outcomes from the supervision (16.0%), the syllabus (28.6%), the submission assignment (42.4%), the digital learning content of Canvas (43.8%), the combination of everything (43.8%), and the IPL group discussions (78.6%). In stratified analyses, ‘teacher education and child welfare students’ were significantly more likely to gain better insight into the WHO competencies than “health and social care students”, and they were also more overall satisfied.Conclusion: Students agreed that blended learning was a suitable approach, although the learning outcomes from the face-to-face discussions were markedly higher than from other course components. While the majority had learnt something about the WHO competencies, the teacher and child welfare students achieved the best learning outcomes, including new knowledge about the WHO competencies.Keywords: blended learning, interprofessional learning, health studies, social studies, teacher education, competencies

Keywords

• blended learning
• interprofessional learning
• health studies
• social studies
• teacher education
• competencies