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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Online interprofessional education in
dietetic students
Sherryn EVANS,1Catherine WARD1and Claire MARGERISON2
1School of Psychology, 2School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Geelong,
Victoria, Australia
Abstract
Aim: The need for dietetic students to develop interprofessional collaborative practice capabilities is well recog-
nised. The aim of this study was to examine the ability of an online interprofessional education (IPE) unit (using
asynchronous and synchronous media) to improve dietetic students’ confidence in understanding professional roles
and attitudes associated with interprofessional practice along with exploring their experience in the unit.
Methods: Final year master of dietetic students undertaking a compulsory online unit in IPE were invited to
complete a questionnaire examining their confidence in understanding professional roles and their interprofessional
attitudes both pre- and post-delivery of the unit, and to participate in semi-structured telephone interviews to
explore their experience in the unit.
Results: Thirty-five dietetic students completed the questionnaire pre- and post-unit, along with seven students
undertaking a telephone interview. Their confidence in understanding the roles of other health professions (P=
0.000 to 0.014), self-assessment of interprofessional communication and teamwork skills (P= 0.002) and attitudes
towards interprofessional interaction (P= 0.001) and interprofessional relationships (P= 0.002) increased signifi-
cantly from pre- to post-unit. The students articulated positives about the experience (flexibility of the delivery,
opportunity to reflect on personal factors related to teamwork, increasing their knowledge of other professions) and
some challenges (lack of body language, some technological difficulties, the need for regular contribution to the
teams’ asynchronous discussion boards).
Conclusions: This study suggests that although there can be some challenges in online IPE, it can be a positive
experience and can improve dietetic students’ collaborative practice attitudes and confidence in understanding other
professional roles.
Key words: asynchronous, collaborative practice, dietetic students, interprofessional education, online,
synchronous.
Introduction
The term Interprofessional Collaborative Practice has been
developed to describe ‘when multiple health workers, from
different professional backgrounds, provide comprehensive
services by working with patients, their families, carers and
communities to deliver the highest quality of care across
settings’.1Interprofessional health-care teams working based
on the principles of interprofessional collaborative practice
understand how to optimise the skills of their members,
share case management and provide better health services to
patients and the community.1
The value of interprofessional collaborative practice is well
recognised at both the national and international level. The
World Health Organization Framework for Action on Inter-
professional Education and Collaborative Practice Report1
clearly articulates the impact of interprofessional collabora-
tive practice in addressing local health needs, strengthening
health systems and improving patient outcomes. At the Aus-
tralian level, the National Common Health Capability
Resource2identifies areas of activity shared by the health
workforce in the delivery of care, and articulates the under-
pinning behavioural skills that characterise this work being
performed well. Collaborative practice, defined as ‘Builds
and maintains effective working relationships and works in
partnership with others’, is one of the five overarching
domains of activity common to the Australian health work-
force identified in this resource.2
S. Evans, MND, Lecturer and Coordinator Interprofessional Education
C. Ward, BAppSc (OT), Lecturer
C. Margerison, PhD, Dietetics Course Director
Correspondence: S. Evans, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health,
Deakin University, Geelong Waterfront Campus, 1 Gheringhap Street,
Geelong, Vic. 3220, Australia. Tel: +61-3522-78437. Email:
sherryn.evans@deakin.edu.au
Accepted August 2015
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Nutrition & Dietetics 2015; ••: ••–•• DOI: 10.1111/1747-0080.12235
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia 1
The Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) also recog-
nises the value of collaborative practice as evidenced in
various versions of their National Competency Standards
for Dietitians in Australia.3,4 The most recent version of
these competency standards, for example, includes domain
4 ‘Collaborates with clients and stakeholders’, and more
specifically key task 4.3 ‘Collaborates within and across
teams effectively’. This key task includes five observable
and/or measureable actions: ‘respecting the goals and roles
of clients and other professionals’, ‘participates in collabo-
rative decision marking, shared responsibility, and shared
vision within a team’, ‘shares responsibility for team action,
recognising the diverse roles and responsibility other team
members play’, ‘guides and supports other team members
and peers’ and ‘actively promotes the role of a Dietitian’. It
is therefore imperative that the dietetic students and dieti-
tians are provided with the opportunity to develop in these
areas.
Developing interprofessional capabilities in health-care
students and practicing health professionals has been recog-
nised as a key national workforce development task for
several years now.5To begin to develop these capabilities,
both current professionals and students need training in
interprofessional education (IPE). IPE has been defined as
education that ‘occurs when two or more professionals learn
with, from and about each other to improve collaboration
and the quality of care’.6The effectiveness of IPE in enabling
effective collaborative practice has been well demonstrated.1
IPE has traditionally been delivered in a face-to-face
format; however, in the last 10 years there has been signifi-
cant growth in the online delivery of IPE, reflecting both the
growth of the digital age and cloud learning, and the logis-
tical and organisational difficulties of bringing students from
a range of courses together in a face-to-face manner.
Researchers have demonstrated that, like the face-to-face
environment, positive learner outcomes can also be achieved
with the online delivery of IPE such as sharing professional
knowledge,7enjoying the learning experience,8engagement
in collaborative problem solving and learning about each
other’s roles,9improvement in attitudes towards interprofes-
sional relationships and interaction and confidence in under-
standing other health professions roles.10 There have not
been any studies of online IPE that have examined changes
in learners’ behaviours associated with the experience or
subsequent changes in patient/client or health-care process
outcomes.
Although several studies have included dietetic students
in their cohorts, only one study has specifically focused on
dietetics students’ perceptions and experiences of online
IPE.11 In this study, 20 dietetic students (77% of the cohort)
completed a questionnaire designed specifically to evaluate
the satisfaction of dietetic students with three online IPE
modules involving asynchronous (non-real time) discus-
sions. These modules did not include an online synchronous
(real-time) component. Six of these students (the first six to
volunteer) also attended a focus group to explore the impact
of participating in the IPE modules. It was found that par-
ticipating in the online IPE modules enhanced the student’s
opinions of the value of the roles of other professionals and
enhanced their awareness of interprofessional issues.11
No Australian studies have specifically examined dietetic
students’ perceptions and experience in online IPE. Our
earlier work,10 which did include dietetic students, showed
that overall, the attitudes of health-care students (dietetic,
medical, occupational therapy, nursing, social work, psy-
chology, clinical exercise physiology) towards interprofes-
sional interaction and interprofessional relationships and
their confidence in understanding the roles of other health
professions increased significantly for all professions from
pre- to post-unit. The attitudes of the dietetic students,
however, were not examined separately from the other
health-care students. Similarly, McKenna et al.12 found that
Australian health-care students (dietetic, paramedic,
nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy) were
positive about their learning experiences and the value of an
online IPE module in assisting their understandings of the
roles of other health professionals. Again the dietetic stu-
dents, while included in the study, were not examined sepa-
rately from the other students. In addition, the IPE module
was voluntary and therefore those who attended may have
been more motivated about IPE than those who did not
attend.
The aim of this study was to examine the ability of an
online IPE unit (using asynchronous and synchronous
media) to improve dietetic students’ confidence in under-
standing professional roles and attitudes associated with
interprofessional practice along with exploring the experi-
ence of these students in the unit.
Method
The Faculty of Health at Deakin University runs a fully
online one credit point IPE unit (over 12 weeks) for students
from seven different health professions: clinical exercise
physiology, nursing, occupational therapy, social work,
medicine, dietetics and psychology. This unit is compulsory
for master of dietetics students and is undertaken in the last
6 months of their degree. There are two streams to the unit
that run concurrently throughout the trimester: the interac-
tive case conference stream and the self-directed IPE stream.
In the interactive case conference stream students are allo-
cated to interprofessional teams of eight students, guided by
a facilitator. In these teams, they participate in weekly dis-
cussions via asynchronous team discussion boards to con-
sider issues related to interprofessional collaboration (such
as the overlapping roles of health professionals, the role of
the patient in the team and communication within the team)
and also participate in three case conferences using the
desktop virtual classroom environment Blackboard Collabo-
rate (http://www.blackboard.com). In these case confer-
ences, the teams develop an interprofessional care plan for a
patient with a presentation that has relevance to all of the
professions involved. In the self-directed IPE stream, stu-
dents explore in a self-directed manner the key themes of the
unit including key factors of interprofessional collaboration,
understanding your own and others’ personality style, health
S. Evans et al.
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia2
professionals’ roles, leadership in collaborative teams, teams
and team development, and conflict management and asser-
tiveness in collaborative teams. Based on these explorations
they are encouraged to reflect on how such factors have
impacted on how they have worked in teams in the past, and
how they may impact on working in health-care teams in the
future.
All master of dietetic students enrolled in Deakin Univer-
sities online IPE unit in 2012 were invited to participate in
the study and complete an anonymous paper-based ques-
tionnaire the week before the unit commenced and the week
after final results were submitted. The questionnaire
included questions about their confidence in understanding
the roles of different health professionals, the University of
West England Interprofessional Questionnaire (UWEIQ)13
and demographic information.
Respondents were also asked to indicate their level of
agreement with the statement ‘I feel confident in my under-
standing of the role of a . . . in the health care team’ for nine
specific health professions (dietetic, medicine, nursing,
occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social work, psychol-
ogy, pharmacy, speech pathology) from 1 (strongly agree) to
6 (strongly disagree) for each profession. A pre- to post-test
decrease in score indicates an increased confidence in under-
standing of the role.
The UWEIQ13 has 35 items across four subscales: com-
munication and teamwork, interprofessional relationships,
interprofessional learning and interprofessional interaction.
On the communication and teamwork subscale, scores from
9 to 20, 21 to 25 and 26 to 36 are considered to indicate
positive, neutral and negative self-assessment, respectively,
of the respondent’s own communication and teamwork
skills. Scores on the interprofessional relationships subscale
from 8 to 20, 21 to 27 and 28 to 40 indicate positive, neutral
and negative attitudes, respectively, towards the respondent’s
own interprofessional relationships. For the interprofes-
sional learning subscale and the interprofessional interaction
subscale, scores from 9 to 22, 23 to 31 and 32 to 45 indicate
positive, neutral and negative attitudes, respectively, towards
perceptions of interprofessional interaction and interprofes-
sional learning. For all scales, therefore, a pre- to post-test
decrease in scores indicates an improvement—that is, a more
positive attitude—on the measure. Reliability of the instru-
ment has been reported to range from 0.76 to 0.84.13
At the completion of the unit and after the post-unit
questionnaire had been administered, all master of dietetic
students were also invited to participate in a semi-structured
telephone interview designed to explore their experience in
the online IPE unit. Six interview questions were informed
by a review of relevant and recent literature on students’
experiences in online IPE.7,8 The questions encouraged the
students to describe the degree of interprofessional learning
they perceived occurring, their experiences on the discus-
sion boards and in the case conferences, the value of the
reflective opportunities in the unit, the degree of independ-
ence and motivation necessitated by the online nature of the
unit and any areas they felt could make the experience better
in the future. Copies of the interview questions were
emailed to the interview participants 2 days prior to the
interview.
The study was approved by Deakin University Human
Research Ethics Committee (EC_147–2008).
To facilitate analysis, pre- and post-unit questionnaires
were matched by person (de-identified). Statistical analyses
were performed using SPSS (version 21.0; PASW Inc.,
Chicago, IL, USA). Means and SDs for the matched sample
were calculated for the scales measuring student confidence
in understanding the roles of the nine different health pro-
fessions and for each of the four UWEIQ subscales. Data
were not included for students who did not complete the
questionnaire at both time frames. Any missing scores within
a scale were replaced using mean substitution. As the data
were normally distributed, paired sample t-tests were con-
ducted to explore any differences in participant responses
pre- to post-unit.
All of the telephone interviews were audio recorded, tran-
scribed verbatim and analysed based on the principles of
interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). IPA is a
qualitative research methodology designed to explore and
understand the subjective human experience of a particular
phenomenon, for example, being a student in the online IPE
unit, through a process of interpretative engagement with the
transcripts.14 Two investigators independently read all of the
transcripts and produced unfocused notes that reflected their
initial thoughts about the text, which was then followed by
rereading the transcripts to extract meanings, and then iden-
tifying emerging themes and labelling these. The two inves-
tigators then met to review how the identified themes
interrelated and formed agreed clusters of themes to assist in
structuring the analysis. The text was relabelled by one of the
investigators with the agreed themes. A summary table was
then produced of the themes with illustrative quotes. The
qualitative data analysis program, NVivo 10,QSR Interna-
tional Pty Ltd, Doncaster, Victoria, Australia, was used to
organise the text, explore the data and summarise the results.
Results
Thirty-five of the dietetic students (70%) completed the
questionnaire both pre- and post-unit. All but one of these
students were female, with a mean age of 24.6 (SD = 2.7)
years. Seven dietetic students (14%), all of which were
female, participated in the interviews. As the questionnaire
was anonymous, it is not known if the students who partici-
pated in the interviews also completed the questionnaire,
and vice versa.
Table 1 presents the mean pre- and post-unit delivery
scores for the questions relating to the students’ confidence
in understanding the roles of nine different health-care pro-
fessions. There were significant decreases in these scores for
each of the other professions apart from their own profession
of dietetics. This indicates an increase in the students’ con-
fidence in understanding the roles of these other professions.
Table 2 presents the mean pre- and post-unit delivery
UWEIQ scores. There were significant decreases from pre- to
post-unit delivery in the mean score on the communication
Online interprofessional education
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia 3
and teamwork subscale (20.5–18.5, P= 0.002), the inter-
professional interaction subscale (33.4–31.0, P= 0.001) and
the interprofessional relationships subscale (18.7–15.4,
P= 0.002), indicating a more positive attitude on each
measure. There was no change from pre- to post-unit deliv-
ery on the mean interprofessional learning subscale score.
Analysis of the telephone interviews identified three
themes that were positive about the dietetic students’ online
IPE experience: flexibility of the online delivery, their actual
interprofessional learning and the opportunity for self-
reflection. The flexibility of the online delivery of the unit
enabled the students to participate in the unit around their
other study commitments, work commitments and personal
lives. They also appreciated that the online delivery enabled
them to meet with students from a variety of professions who
were based in a variety of geographical locations.
It was good also because we’ve got different team
members, we’ve all got different schedules and every-
thing, so the fact that it was online made it a bit easier for
everyone to get together, you don’t have a travel time
involved. And really you know your team members could
be anywhere, interstate or anything really so that was
good from that aspect.
The students reflected in a positive way about their actual
interprofessional learning in the unit, particularly in relation
to their understanding about the roles of other health pro-
fessions. They identified an improved understanding of
these professions as a key outcome of the experience.
I think one of the benefits was that I didn’t really have
much of an idea of what some of the other professions
did, so that helped me to have a better understanding of
what their role is in a hospital setting or in a clinical
environment, and I think it was good to figure the ways
that the other professions work, and how we can collabo-
rate together to make things easier, and get the best
patient outcome as well.
You really got to understand and know and apply your
skills and then understand other people’s skills and it’s
not just about understanding what they do and how they
do it but also knowing where there is a crossover between
professions and where that may arise or difficulties may
arise because different professions may approach exactly
the same thing from different angles.
Most of the students also felt that the opportunity to
reflect on factors impacting on their own collaborative prac-
tice capabilities (such as their personality style, conflict man-
agement style, level of assertiveness and leadership style) was
valuable.
Before I did the unit I didn’t think I had that much
experience with teams, but it made me think about
instances where you know all these kind of same issues
happen in different settings, like conflict issues, leader-
ship, different personalities. You know so whether it be
health care or you know a corporate kind of area, what-
ever it is, there’s the same issues that come up and you
know people deal with them in different ways’.
Although the students described a number of positive
themes from their experience in the online IPE unit, three
themes relating to challenges with the experience were also
noted: lack of body language to facilitate communication in
Table 1 Confidence in understanding
Profession
Mean pre-unit
(standard deviation)
Mean post-unit
(standard deviation) tdf Significance
Occupational therapy 2.74 (1.2) 1.94 (0.8) 0.8 34 <0.001
Social work 2.83 (0.9) 2.03 (0.6) 5.7 34 <0.001
Nursing 2.17 (0.9) 1.69 (0.6) 2.8 34 <0.001
Psychology 3.11 (1.0) 1.94 (0.6) 7.5 34 <0.001
Medicine 2.00 (1.1) 1.57 (0.6) 2.6 34 0.014
Dietetics 1.46 (1.3) 1.09 (0.3) 1.7 34 0.108
Pharmacy 2.54 (1.2) 1.91 (0.8) 2.9 34 0.006
Physiotherapy 2.23 (1.1) 1.69 (0.6) 3.2 34 0.003
Speech pathology 2.4 (1.1) 1.62 (0.5) 4.0 34 <0.001
Bold values indicate significant results: P<0.05.
Table 2 UWE interprofessional questionnaire results
UWE scale
Mean pre-unit
(standard deviation)
Mean post-unit
(standard deviation) tdf Significance
IP communication/teamwork 20.53 (2.9) 18.56 (2.4) 3.5 33 0.002
IP learning 15.00 (3.8) 16.54 (46.5) −1.3 34 0.198
IP interaction 33.36 (4.2) 30.97 (4.7) 3.3 32 <0.001
IP relationship 18.74 (3.2) 15.4 (2.7) 5.2 32 0.002
IP, interprofessional; UWE, University of West England.
Bold values indicate significant results: P<0.05.
S. Evans et al.
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia4
the synchronous environment, technological difficulty in the
synchronous environment and the need for regular contri-
bution to the asynchronous discussion boards. Although the
students acknowledged enjoying the synchronous case con-
ferences and attributed key learnings to these, they found
not being able to physically see the other students, and more
specifically other students’ body language, challenging to
their team communication at times.
Without having that face to face contact, just by voice, it
lacks a bit of a personal element to it. A lot of communi-
cation can be non-verbal as well, so sometimes it’s hard to
see the meaning of what the person communicates by
listening to their voice.
Some students were also at times challenged by techno-
logical problems in the synchronous case conferences. They
reported occasional problems with Internet connections,
dropping out of the case conference program or headsets not
working, which therefore limited their ability to vocally con-
tribute to the case conferences. Interestingly, however,
several of the students were able to relate such challenges
to encounters they may experience in a real-life work
environment.
The technology was sometimes bad and we had weeks
where we couldn’t hear people and weeks where people
could only type despite doing everything or you would
cut in and out and that can be really frustrating but I also
kind of go, well if you work in a rural community and do
case conferences that’s probably reality as well.
Several students expressed frustration about the need to
contribute to the asynchronous team discussion boards on a
regular basis.
Sometimes the discussion boards felt a bit forced because
we had to contribute for assessment, so a lot of the times
we only did it because we had to. And there’s no flow on
a discussion board so sometimes it felt a bit of a waste of
time.
Discussion
The need for dietetic students along with accredited practic-
ing dietitians to engage in IPE to facilitate the development
of interprofessional capabilities is well recognised; however,
there is little research investigating the outcomes of their
involvement in such education. Even more specifically, there
is little research exploring outcomes associated with their
involvement in online IPE, a common method of IPE deliv-
ery. This study examined the ability of an online IPE unit to
improve final year dietetic students’ confidence in under-
standing professional roles and attitudes associated with
interprofessional practice along with exploring the experi-
ence of these students in the unit.
The questionnaire results demonstrated that the online
IPE unit did increase dietetic students’ reported confidence
in understanding the roles of other health professionals.
Reinforcing this finding, the students articulated in the tel-
ephone interviews an improved understanding of the roles of
other professions as a key outcome of the experience.
Earland et al.11 also found their online IPE modules allowed
dietetic students to consider the roles of different health
professional groups. Similarly, several other studies involving
a range of health-care students have demonstrated learning
about other health professionals’ roles and confidence in
understanding these roles.9,10,12 The self-reported increase in
confidence in, and understanding of, these roles in the
current study is important given that understanding the roles
of others as well as one’s own role in the provision and
coordination of health care is recognised as a key domain or
competency of collaborative practice.3,15 It was interesting to
note, however, that although there were significant increases
in understanding of the role of other professions, the change
in understanding of the role of the dietitian was not signifi-
cant. Some previous studies in health-care students have
reported an increase in confidence in, and awareness of,
one’s own professional role following IPE, and a resultant
increase in their confidence to contribute and collaborate in
a team.16 The dietetic students did rate their confidence in
their own role high at the beginning of the unit. This high
confidence rating may in fact be a reflection of a high con-
fidence in understanding their own role, or may reflect a
higher level of confidence in their role relative to the other
professions’ roles examined. Given that the dietetic students
rated this confidence high to begin with, the scale used may
not have been sensitive enough to detect any further changes
in confidence. It is also possible, however, that the unit did
not provide the opportunity for the dietetic students to
develop a deeper understanding of their role in the team.
Future research in IPE with dietetic students could explore if
developing a deeper understanding of their role is possible in
IPE, and more specifically, what kind of IPE learning oppor-
tunities best facilitate this.
It was also found that the online IPE unit improved some
other key perceptions and attitudes relating to collaborative
practice. The dietetic students’ self-assessment of their own
communication and teamwork skills improved, along with
perceptions of their own interprofessional interactions and
their attitudes towards their own interprofessional relation-
ships. Although the impact on actual professional behaviour
was not assessed in the study, these changes in perceptions
and attitudes may provide a good foundation to develop
behaviour change in areas consistently recognised as key for
collaborative practice such as communication and relation-
ship building.3,4,15 Future work could examine if involve-
ment in such a unit is effective in changing their actual
behaviours in these areas.
The telephone interviews indicated that the dietetic stu-
dents also valued the opportunity to reflect on personal
factors that may impact on their health-care teamwork, and
to explore how their experiences in dealing with these
factors in the past may transfer to future situations as a
health-care professional. The students were able to consider
their own personality style, conflict management style and
leadership style, along with the implications of these for
working in a team environment. This learning may provide
good grounding to assist them with key behaviours of
Online interprofessional education
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia 5
collaborative practice in their future roles, such as under-
standing and applying leadership principles and engaging
others to positively and constructively address conflict,15
again key tasks and actions recognised as important for
dietitians in Australia as stated in the DAA National Com-
petency Standards for Dietitians in Australia.4
In addition to the outcomes relating to changes in atti-
tudes and perceptions in key areas of collaborative practice,
the telephone interviews revealed some important factors
about the students’ experience of the delivery of the unit. The
online delivery of the unit presented both positive and chal-
lenging aspects for the dietetic students. The dietetic stu-
dents, like students from other health professions in
previous work,7valued the flexibility of the online delivery
of the IPE unit, enabling them to juggle the workload around
their other commitments. Studying is not the only part of
university students’ life; they work for pay on an average of
17 hours a week along with attending on campus sessions,
travelling to and from campus, extracurricular activities,
caring for dependents, managing personal business and
socialising.17
While valuing the flexibility of the online delivery, the
dietetic students were however at times challenged by
aspects of the online synchronous interaction, including the
inability to read their peers’ body language and occasional
technological problems in the synchronous environment.
These challenges are not uncommon to online synchronous
communication, having been noted in other online synchro-
nous IPE studies18 along with other non-IPE-based synchro-
nous studies.19 The causes of the technical problems were
likely variable, with the use of home computers without
standard desktop configurations and Internet connections of
fluctuating quality as the most likely significant factors.
Interestingly, our previous work exploring the experience for
facilitators in the online IPE unit20 also identified the lack of
visual cues and technological problems as a challenge for
them in facilitating teams of students. As discussed in Evans
et al.,20 the use of the webcam tool in the synchronous
program should be considered to make the learner–learner
interaction more personal,21 along with more education for
both students and facilitators on the use of features of the
synchronous program to emulate the visual cues that are
missing. Many of the students did recognise that such chal-
lenges could also be a problem in the workplace, particularly
in rural and regional areas, and therefore should be encour-
aged to look at these challenges as interprofessional collabo-
ration learning opportunities, with facilitators trained to
guide this specific learning situation.20
The dietetic students also highlighted feeling frustrated at
times with the need for regular contributions to the asyn-
chronous discussion boards. These weekly asynchronous
discussions form an important part of the unit, providing the
opportunity for the teams of students to ‘learn with, from
and about each other’ in a reflective manner throughout the
entire 12-week trimester, not just in the four synchronous
case conferences. As much of the dietetic curriculum is
delivered in a face-to-face manner, the requirement to con-
tribute so frequently to online discussion boards may have
been a new experience for these students. The average time
requirement for contributing to these online discussions per
week is however less than an hour, which is equal to or less
than the time requirement of a face-to-face tutorial that
would be offered as standard in a one credit point unit. It
may therefore be valuable in the future to make these time
requirements and comparisons clearer to the students. What
is not clear from these findings is whether the actual issue
was the total time needed to contribute to these discussions,
or the frequency of the contributions. This could be explored
more in future work.
It is important to note that all of the dietetic students were
also undertaking either community or clinical placement
while undertaking the online IPE unit. It is unknown to what
degree these other placement experiences may have
impacted on the students’ attitudinal changes and experi-
ence in the IPE unit. It is also not known if there were any
differences in the experience or attitudes between dietetics
students undertaking the two different types of placement
(community or clinical) at this time. Earland et al.11 sug-
gested that good interprofessional experiences during place-
ment enhanced the student’s subsequent learning in IPE
modules and also that IPE before placements led to dietetic
students starting their placements with a greater awareness
of their own role and roles of other professionals, but they
did not examine the impact of doing university-based IPE
and placements concurrently. It is likely that for the dietetic
students in the current study, the learning in their place-
ments facilitated and enhanced their learning in the IPE unit
and vice versa. Historically, there has been debate as to when
in a degree IPE should be delivered, with some suggesting
that it should be left until the final years of a degree when
students have begun to develop their professional identity
and have had some practice experience, whereas others have
suggested early introduction in the degree to begin to
address issues such as stereotyping.22 Many now argue for a
continuum of IPE embedded and scaffolded throughout the
degree and throughout lifelong continuing interprofessional
development.23 Regardless of when IPE is offered in a degree
and in relation to placement timing, what is most important
is that the content and method of delivery is carefully tai-
lored to the stage of education.
Developing interprofessional capabilities is essential for
dietitians. This study suggests that, while there can be some
challenges in online IPE, it can improve dietetic students’
confidence in understanding the roles of other professions
and collaborative practice attitudes and therefore may
provide a good foundation for the development of interpro-
fessional competencies in the future. Given that it is not
always possible to deliver IPE in face-to-face manner, online
IPE could be considered as a real and effective option for
inclusion in dietetic curriculum.
Funding source
This study was funded by the School of Psychology, Faculty
of Health, Deakin University.
S. Evans et al.
© 2015 Dietitians Association of Australia6
Conflict of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Authorship
SE was responsible for study design, collection and analysis
of data and writing of the paper. CW contributed to the
collection and analysis of data and writing of the paper. CM
contributed to the writing of the paper.
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Online interprofessional education
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