Interprofessional Teaching Teams for an Interprofessional First Year Curriculum: Challenges and Opportunities

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1 Interprofessional Teaching Teams for an Interprofessional First Year Curriculum: Challenges and Opportunities Abstract Dr Melissa Davis, A/Prof Sue Jones Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University The new Interprofessional First Year Curriculum in Curtin s Faculty of Health Sciences includes large classes taught by two or three staff members from different disciplinary backgrounds. The commitment and quality of teachers is fundamental to the success of team teaching and engaging and motivating first year students. Interprofessional team teaching affords many opportunities and advantages for students and staff. However, building, developing and retaining high quality teaching teams via cooperation with seven schools in the Faculty has many inherent challenges. This Nuts and Bolts session will present our experiences related to interprofessional team teaching in large first year units and invite participants to engage in discussion about strategies for building interprofessional teaching teams, providing effective staff development programs, and building the leadership capacity of unit coordinators to work successfully with their teaching teams. Background Several driving forces to develop a health care workforce for the future led to the implementation of an Interprofessional First Year (IPFY) curriculum within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin in Among these were the World Health Organisation s (2010) mandate that interprofessional education be embedded in all health professional education curricula, in addition to the Bradley Review s recommendations for widening participation (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent, & Scales, 2008); the National Health Workforce Strategic Framework (Australian Health Ministers Conference 2004), Australia s Health Workforce Productivity Commission Report (2005) and Health Workforce Australia (2010) Curtin s Interprofessional First Year (IPFY) curriculum is delivered to approximately 2200 students across 19 courses. The courses represent a wide range of health and social care which fall into four broad categories: science focused (e.g., molecular genetics and biotechnology and human biology), client care focus (e.g., physiotherapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy, social work), community health focus (e.g., health promotion, health, safety and environment) and generic health science course and non-work ready courses (e.g., health sciences, psychology). The IPFY comprises five Core units, comprising 50% of the curriculum, which are studied by students in all courses, a small range of key bioscience, science and behavioural science units that are studied by students in at least two (Shared units; 25%) and a pecific unit for each course per semester (25%) to facilitate students developing a sense of belonging to their School and discipline/profession. Nuts and Bolts 1

2 The IPFY curriculum units were designed by interprofessional teams to foster interprofessional learning. A fundamental part of the interprofessional experience is the use of Interprofessional teaching teams in all but one of the Core Units. The team teaching model involves two staff from different discipline/professional backgrounds co-facilitating classes of 48 students, or teams of three staff for classes of 100 students. Table 1 summarises the unit enrolments, class sizes and team teaching arrangement for the Core Units. Table 1: Unit enrolments, tutorial pattern and teaching team Unit Unit Class No. of Teaching Team Enrolment Size Tutors Foundations for Professional S staff from different Health Practice 100 S2 478 Human Structure and Function S staff (often from 100 S2 536 different ) Health & Health Behaviour 100 S (S1) 1 1 staff member (from a variety of health S (S2) 2 ) 2 staff from different Evidence Informed Health S staff from different Practice 100 S Indigenous Cultures and Health S staff member (half of 130 S whom are Indigenous) Staffing and developing teaching teams The change in delivery of the first year curriculum to an IPFY represented a significant change in organisational culture. The teaching experiences in the first year units delivered in the Faculty shifted from being essentially private to one of team teaching, and from primarily delivering content to facilitating student learning in a collaborative, student-centred environment. The Faculty of Health Sciences is comprised of 7 Schools (Biomedical Sciences, Nursing & Midwifery, Occupational Therapy & Social Work, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Psychology & Speech Pathology and Public Health) that are responsible for allocating staff to teach in the IPFY commensurate with staff expertise and proportionate to student enrolments from each School. Since income from the IPFY units is allocated to Schools based on teaching contributions, contributing to teaching in the IPFY is regarded as important by Heads of Schools. This leads to a tension between Schools needs to balance staff workload allocations and meet their obligations in terms of staff numbers and the desire to recruit and develop the most skilled and dedicated team of staff teaching in the IPFY. An IPFY Professional Development day was held prior to the commencement of semester to introduce staff to the philosophy and design of the interprofessional curriculum and the roles and expectations of teaching staff. This included discussion and experiential activities related to team teaching and co-facilitation of interprofessional learning as well as unit specific orientation components. Feedback on the professional development was very positive and provided staff with modelling of the interprofessional team teaching style we desired. Unit Coordinators held regular meetings with teaching teams throughout the semester to discuss teaching materials/process, assessment and moderation. Some unit-specific training was provided to staff in terms of using technologies requires for assessment (e.g., iportfolio, Nuts and Bolts 2

3 Blackboard) and staff were encouraged to access other training available through the university. The First Year Unit Coordination team met fortnightly which was important for sharing practice and frustrations, identifying key issues for management, and developing a cohesive and supportive team. Individual meetings were held with various Unit Leaders to deal with unit specific issues. Unit Coordinators were also encouraged to attend the university s Unit Coordinator Leadership Development program but not all have attended. Opportunities and Challenges afforded by Interprofessional Team Teaching It is well recognised that one of the most important contributors to the success of Interprofessional education is the commitment and quality of the facilitators (Freeth, Hammick, Reeves, Koppel & Barr, 2005; Howkins & Bray, 2008). Teaching quality is also recognised as essential to engaging, motivating and supporting students for a successful first year experience (James, Krause, & Jennings, 2010). Team teaching literature tells us that the composition of teaching teams and the ways that staff interact to complement each other s strengths and styles are keys to the success of team teaching partnerships (e.g., Yanamandram & Noble, 2006). This suggests that recruiting, developing and retaining a team of dedicated, enthusiastic, and skilful Y1 teachers needs to be a priority for ensuring the success of large team-taught first year units. Indeed a highlight for many staff teaching in and coordinating the IPFY units was the development of the interprofessional teaching teams. Whilst there was some degree of anxiety about interprofessional team teaching at the commencement of semester, most staff greatly enjoyed this approach, as they not only learned a lot about their co-teacher s discipline, but shared the teaching load, strategies for facilitating student learning, problem solving and provided a source of within class group moderation. All unit coordinators indicated this was one of the best aspects of the IPFY curriculum. This has resulted in a significant cultural shift and the helpful, friendly teaching team were frequently commented upon by students as one of the best aspects of units. However, alongside the considerable rewards and opportunities related to team teaching are numerous challenges related to building and managing our large teaching teams in a Facultybased curriculum where staff and unit are managed by Schools. These include: Line management: First and foremost is whilst the unit coordinators and the Coordinator of the First Year Experience have responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning in the units, they do not have any line management authority relevant to selecting teaching staff or managing issues with staff performance. This required the establishment of processes around providing feedback on staff performance that still require elaboration and attention for the best possible outcomes. Composition and continuity of teaching teams: The changing nature of staff workloads semester by semester related to other teaching commitments and unexpected changes in other years of the curriculum mean that advance planning of staffing is difficult, and continuity of staffing from semester to semester is variable. Whilst we prefer that staff teach a minimum of three tutorials per week in a unit to minimise the size of teaching teams and the resulting complexity for unit coordinators in terms of managing quality in the unit, staff schedules (e.g., part time work and other teaching commitments) and timetabling combine to preclude this in many cases. Nuts and Bolts 3

4 Further, due to individual staff availability and timetabling of classes, in most instances, staff teach with more than one team of colleagues in one or more units. Staff skills and training needs: Some staff come with strong professional practice backgrounds but are less experienced and knowledgeable with university administration processes and procedures, commonly used teaching technologies (PowerPoint, Blackboard etc), and assessment practices. Lack of confidence and underdeveloped skills for using technologies in the classroom, to support flexible learning, and for assessment can impact substantially on the student experience and are an important area for future staff professional development. Staff also vary in their degree of comfort and skill level for facilitating learning in a collaborative, studentcentred environment compared to a more teacher-centric, didactic approach. Further support for staff in facilitating interprofessional education and encouraging staff to be involved in peer feedback on teaching is also an important area for future work. Session outline Icebreaker: 2 minutes Ask audience: Who has experience of units in which teaching staff come from areas outside the School/Department that owns the unit? Presenters: 13 minutes Key opportunities and challenges associated with Interprofessional team teaching in the first year curriculum. Small group discussion: 10 minutes. Questions for discussion: What strategies need to be put in place to build an interprofessional team of teaching staff to deliver an IP curriculum? What professional development is necessary for staff to feel competent in facilitating interprofessional learning for Year 1 students? What professional development is necessary for Unit Coordinators to lead an interprofessional teaching team? Feedback to group (5 minutes): Key responses to each of the discussion questions References Australian Health Ministers Conference (2004), National health workforce strategic framework. Sydney. Retrieved from nference+%282004%29%2c+national+health+workforce+strategic+framework.+sy dney.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-us:official&client=firefox-a. Australia Productivity Commission (2005). Australia s health workforce research report. Melbourne. Retrieved February 11, 2011 from: Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H., & Scales, B. (2008). Review of Australian Higher Education. Retrieved 19 February 2011 from: cationreport.aspx Freeth, D., Hammick, M., Reeves, S., Koppel, I. & Barr, H. (2005). Effective Interprofessional education: Development, delivery and evaluation. Oxford: Nuts and Bolts 4

5 Blackwell Publishing. Health Workforce Australia (2010). Annual Report Howkins, E. & Bray, J. (2008). Preparing for Interprofessional teaching: Theory and practice. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing. James, R., Krause, K-L., & Jennings, C. (2010). The First Year Experience in Australian Universities: Findings from 1994 to University of Melbourne: Centre for the Study of Higher Education. World Health Organisation (2010). Framework for action on interprofessional education and collaborative practice. Geneva: WHO press. Downloaded from 1 April Yanamandram, V. & Noble, G. (2006). Student experiences and perceptions of team teaching in a large undergraduate class. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 3, Nuts and Bolts 5