Background
In the recent past there has been a shift within
organizations from individual work to multidisciplinary teamwork. Through
multidisciplinary teamwork, individuals from different functional backgrounds
come together to share their knowledge and expertise in order to solve
a problem. Thus, there has been a demand from organizations and businesses
throughout the United States and the rest of the world for institutions
of higher education to provide not only intelligent graduates, but also
graduates who are trained to understand and function in a team work
setting. Illinois Institute of Technology has accommodated this demand
through an emphasis on interprofessional education. In fact, IIT offers
70 to 80 interprofessional projects per year, involving a total of 600
to 700 students.
A recent study conducted during the summer of 2003
showed that there are at least 20 schools both nationally and internationally
that provide competitive interprofessional education. The findings from
this study have also shown that IIT's interprofessional program ranks
among the top in respect to the academic structure, learning objectives,
program scale, external involvement, team structure, value proposition,
web presence, and team resources. However, while these report findings
are highly positive, there is still room for improvement.
It is important to the IPRO program that students
are learning the valuable skills essential for success. However, it
is difficult to accurately measure learning and achievement. It is even
more difficult to ensure that students are receiving the same positive
experience as all other students. A system is needed that will allow
the IPRO program to measure learning, while also continually assessing
the program to ensure that the best methods are being implemented to
allow students to achieve learning.
In an attempt to further develop interprofessional
education at IIT, the IPRO program created the IPRO 339 team in the
Fall of 2003 to design and implement an evaluation and assessment system.
Through an extensive assessment of the program and its competitors,
IIT will be able to determine a set of best practices that will enable
IIT to develop a set of marketing and internal strategies to create,
improve, and maintain an aggressive, leading interprofessional curriculum.
The IPRO program will be able to achieve its institutional and learning
objectives while continually improving the quality of the program for
students, faculty, and sponsors.
Continuous Improvement
The Spring 2004 IPRO 339 team is building on the
contributions of the Fall 2003 IPRO 339 team:>
Defining the objectives. The
IPRO Learning Objectives that were defined are multidisciplinary teamwork,
communication, project management, real world problems solving, and
a desire for lifelong learning. The IPRO Institutional Objectives are
to achieve distinction of IIT, attract students and faculty to IIT,
provide a sufficient quantity of IPRO projects on the cutting edge of
technology application, become self-funding, conduct service projects,
maintain student and faculty satisfaction, and achieve the learning
objectives. These are the objectives that all IPRO teams and the IPRO
Program strive for.
Administering Learning Objectives
Surveys.Student and faculty evaluation surveys
were created and administered to measure the achievement of learning
objectives and allow for an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses
of the interprofessional curriculum. This was a first attempt at measuring
actual learning rather than student satisfaction.
Conducting IPRO Debriefing sessions.IPRO teams participated in debriefing session that allowed for
measurement of the achievement of learning objectives while giving
the students an opportunity to reflect on their experiences within
the team.
Defining essential IPRO processes.
The team identified the processes that are essential for achievement
of the learning and institutional objectives. In doing this, the team
was able to suggest some suggestions for improving the IPRO program.
The team was also able to map out these processes in terms of how
IIT does things, which is an important stepping stone in benchmarking
IIT processes against the processes of other schools.
