Reflections on the Creative Design of an Interprofessional Course in Health Professions Education

Streamed Session

Brief Abstract

This session describes how design thinking facilitated decisions about presenting content using the Canvas LMS in a longitudinal interprofessional course. The session explores how implementation considerations informed content design, connections and faculty development. Participants will develop actionable design strategies promoting interprofessional collaboration for their own projects.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Linda Macaulay, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Dr. Linda Macaulay is an instructional designer with HJF in support of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (Bethesda, MD). She has over 15 years of experience teaching in online, blended, and traditional higher education programs. Before coming to the university, she was an Assistant Director of Instructional Technology, she taught graduate and undergraduate educational technology courses and was also an elementary teacher for eleven years. Her background in leadership for change, technology, and learning theory provides a broad base of knowledge to support faculty as they work to enhance their face-to-face, blended, and online courses with innovative teaching strategies and technology. She states that she is a "teacher first, techie second" because it is good teaching and course design that makes all the difference for student success. She lives in Landisville, PA with her son and pets and enjoys listening to Kenny Roger's music and spending time with her family to unplug and recharge. Look for her around the OLC Conference buzzing about in her red mobility scooter!

Co-presenter: Karen Marcellas, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Dr. Marcellas has more than fifteen years of experience in designing instruction for classroom-based, DL and blended learning environments. Her main role at the ETI is ensuring that the team understands faculty members’ needs, and that the team designs and develops products that meet those needs. Her work at the ETI has included front-end analysis, content design, course evaluation, and conducting research on instructional interventions. She has led professional development sessions at USU on topics including the development of effective learning objectives, the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide assessment, and techniques for creating an effective learning environment. Dr. Marcellas has been involved with many instructional and educational technology initiatives at National Defense University (NDU) as well as USUHS. Dr. Marcellas is the co-author of "Instructional Designers and Learning Engineers", a chapter in the book "Modernizing Learning: Building the Future Learning Ecosystem." She has made presentations at numerous national and international conferences, including the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, the Association of American Medical Colleges Annual Meeting, the Online Learning Consortium Accelerate Conference, the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference, the Open Apereo (Sakai) Conference, Educause, the IC Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering Conference (ICICLE), and the Association for Advancement of Computing in Education's E-Learn and EdMedia Conferences.

Co-presenter: Jeanmarie Rey, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences

Co-presenter: Dina Kurzweil, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Dr. Kurzweil is the Director of the ETI and has worked at USU since 2006. In this capacity, she provides strategic direction for the ETI, instructional and educational technology support for faculty, supervision of ETI personnel, and management of the ETI office. Prior to that, she worked at the National Defense University providing direction and vision of the instructional team supporting the Center for Educational Technology. She also is a faculty member in the Health Professions Education program at USU. She has served on numerous committees and task forces examining a wide range of topics including educational technologies, inter-professional education, professional development for K12 and higher education faculty, learning management systems, program assessment and evaluation, instructional design, and teaching/faculty support paradigms. Dr. Kurzweil has presented at international, national, and regional conferences, including American Educational Research Association (AERA), multiple conferences offered by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC), the Open Apereo (Sakai) Conference and AAMC.

Extended Abstract

Interprofessional curricula can be an effective means for students to learn and apply key concepts for a field of study that spans many specialties. However, making a curriculum truly interprofessional requires a number of stakeholders to come together and agree on elements of the course such as content, presentation, and how faculty from diverse training backgrounds can collaborate and make meaningful contributions to the learner experience. Reflective Practice (RP) is a longitudinal interprofessional course designed to teach students in the healthcare professions the metacognitive skill of reflection. This session will describe how the RP course was creatively integrated across multiple domains using the Canvas LMS.  The session will provide background on how Design Thinking (DT) (Plattner, n.d.) facilitated mutually beneficial design decisions as faculty worked with an instructional designer to develop a site to house the curriculum and to plan the roles and faculty development within the curriculum. The perspectives of both the instructional designer and the faculty will be shared. The participants will also have an opportunity to work in small groups to develop plans for their own interprofessional curricular project. During the session, participants will:

  • Use design thinking to identify key instructional design considerations for course content, 

  • Employ key elements of professional development for promoting consistency and collaboration amongst faculty who co-teach the course, and 

  • Plan creative strategies for robust and seamless course design, development, delivery and maintenance. 

  • Brainstorm opportunities for their own interdisciplinary/interprofessional courses.

References:

Plattner, H. (n.d.) An introduction to design thinking: A process guide. Stanford University. https://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf