E-learning for interprofessional education: A challenging option

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The authors were part of a team of six people all with experience and interest in Interprofessional Education (IPE) and e-learning. All the members of the team had completed an e-moderating course as an IPE group which enabled the team to develop skills for learning, teaching and assessing on-line. The aim was to develop an e-learning course that would enrol a group of students from a range of health care professions and engage them in learning using a case study which required an interprofessional approach. The course was planned to run for 5 weeks and gave us a taster of what it was like to be a student whilst we developed skill for becoming an e-moderator. We were out of our comfort zone but came out having a better understanding of being an e-moderator – an important consideration for course delivery with these methods. The team was invited to develop this e-learning programme for IPE as part of the ADELIE (Advanced Design for E-Learning: Institutional Embedding) and ADDER (Assessment & Disciplines: Developing E-tivities Research) research projects at the University of Leicester (http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/projects.html). The team was invited to attend a two day workshop which the University of Leicester team had named as a Carpe Diem 1 (Salmon, 2002). The patient (or service user) should be at the heart of the learning event, and this is key for the Leicester IPE strategy (Lennox & Anderson, 2007). The team decided to evolve a programme around a patient who suffered a stroke. This was a real life event, with the story told by the patient’s wife, who was his full time carer. This example was deliberately chosen as it highlights the advantages of inter-disciplinary team working and inter-professional collaboration. Students can work together on-line to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the case, offer solutions for potential shortfalls and reflect on their experiences. Prior to the 2-day event the team undertook some preparatory work which identified the aims and learning outcomes to be met by the e-learning course. Consideration was given as to how the aims and learning outcomes would be achieved through ‘‘e-tivities’’. The team met with a Carpe Diem e-learning facilitator to confirm whether the team’s proposals were realistic.