What are the Planned Learning Objectives?
Learning Objectives
Learning objectives in professional education are typically created to measure observable behaviour that demonstrates knowledge, skill and/or behavioural interactions. For more information on writing learning objectives, please consider the resources on offered through the Dalhousie Centre for Learning and Teaching [NewTab]
Writing Interprofessional Learning Objectives
Before you begin writing IPE learning objectives – please ensure the disciplines involved with the educational event are at the table and included in their co-creation. This is critical so that as a design team, we are not perpetuating or modelling stereotypical roles or scopes of practice.
The interprofessional learning objectives should reflect the core definition of interprofessional education and the pedagogical approach selected for the education experience. Objectives may inform which pedagogical approach is selected, or the pedagogical approach may influence which learning objectives are set. Learning objectives will likely reflect:
- The achievement or implementation of interprofessional competencies and at what level (exposure, immersion, integration or practice-ready).
- That students are learning with, from, and about each other.
- The pedagogical approach used to achieve the objectives.
- How the objective will be evaluated.
Components of a well-written interprofessional learning objective indicate (Drynan & Murphy, 2013):
- The person/people accomplishing the objective (student or students)
- Action or behaviour (what they will do)
- Conditions (rules or circumstances that must be followed during the completion of the objective).
- Standards of performance expectations
Some example learning objectives that reflect these three elements include:
By the end of the IPE, students will:
- “Use knowledge of one’s own role and team members’ expertise to develop an intervention plan to reduce a patient’s fall risk”.
- “Share responsibility for delivery of clinical care interventions, where relevant to student’s discipline.” (Drynan & Murphy, 2021, p.21)
- “Work collaboratively to perform clinical assessments and design care interventions for allocated patients.” (Drynan & Murphy, 2021, p.21)
- “Recogniz[e] the individual’s professional role during transitions of care” (Bland et al., 2019)
Students will “work collaboratively to perform clinical assessments and design care interventions for allocated patients.” (Drynan & Murphy, 2021, p.21)
- Reflects a competency-based learning pedagogy, addressing the ‘team functioning’ and ‘collaborative leadership’ domains of the CIHC framework.
- Likely supports a simulation-based learning pedagogy, where students actively demonstrate assessment and intervention planning skills.
- Indicates who (students), will do what (perform clinical assessment and design care interventions), under what conditions (for allocated patients), with particular performance expectations (collaboratively).
- Suggests being in the ‘immersion’ area of the learning continuum, expecting application of knowledge and skills.
- Would support evaluation of knowledge, skills, abilities (performing clinical assessment and designing care intervention) and behaviour (collaboration)
While uniprofessional and transdisciplinary learning objectives may be present for particular participants in an IPE, all IPEs must have interprofessional learning objectives.
Types of Learning Objectives Based on IPECP Taxonomy (2021)
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Interprofessional |
Interprofessional learning objectives should reflect the core competencies of interprofessional education. Interprofessional learning objectives are required for an event to be considered an interprofessional learning experience. Interprofessional learning objectives are shared by multiple professions participating in the IPE. |
| Uni-professional learning objectives are objectives specific to one profession that only students of that profession are expected to demonstrate. For example, in an IPE event involving occupational therapy and pharmacy students, only pharmacy students may have the learning objective of ‘determine alternative medication options that may minimize the patient’s unpleasant side effects’. Uni-professional learning objectives may be present in addition to interprofessional ones. | |
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Transdisciplinary learning objectives (term from IPEPC Discussion Paper) |
Learning objectives may be present when two or more professions share the same learning objective because it falls within multiple professions’ scopes of practice, but does not involve learning with, from, and about each profession, or demonstrating interprofessional competencies. For example, nursing, medicine, and pharmacy students may all share a learning objective involving “safely and effectively administering an injection”, but this does not involve application of interprofessional competencies. Transdisciplinary professional learning objectives may be present in addition to interprofessional ones. |
Table 1: Table showing different types of Learning Objectives
