Interprofessional Core Curriculum

A Competency Based Curriculum

Preparing the future workforce is a strategic priority for the Indiana University Interprofessional Practice and Education Center (IU IPE), and our mission statement is to improve the lives of people and populations. Those two ideals led to the creation of the Interprofessional Core Curriculum (IP Core). IP Core is a hybrid, longitudinal, competency-based curriculum designed to create a collaborative culture amongst our students that ensures they are prepared to meet the multifaceted challenges of the modern work environment.

Utilizing years of data collected from our students and faculty, John Biggs's constructivist pedagogical principles, the WHO Global Competency Framework for Universal Health Coverage, the theory of planned behavior, and other evidence-backed theories, IU IPE began creating IP Core by working with the end in mind; collaborative competencies.

A hybrid-longitudinal curriculum

IP Core is either embedded in or runs parallel to the learners' profession-specific curriculum. It’s delivered in four distinct but overlapping stages, each comprising two equally important and impactful parts.

Part 1 - Online Learning Modules: These modules introduce and reinforce the attitudes, knowledge, and skills inherent to the key concepts identified within the new IPEC core competencies. They are delivered via Canvas.

Part 2—Purposefully Designed Team Learning Activities: These require learners to apply the attitudes, knowledge, and skills for collaborative competence, which are demonstrated through observable behaviors.

The Interprofessional Core Curriculum starts with attitude setting, using different voices and evidence of impact to demonstrate how and why interprofessional collaboration matters. These themes are revisited throughout the entire curriculum.

IP Core content helps learners understand why interprofessional work is important and why it matters. It addresses the impact of social norms on learner behaviors, using evidence on outcomes and sharing the voices of patients, clients, role models from their profession, and successful teams doing this work. To build self-efficacy, they're equipped with the knowledge and skills to do this work. When they come together to engage in team-based learning, they are tasked with applying new concepts and knowledge while testing out new skills and behaviors in a psychologically safe environment.

The expected learner competency trajectories developed for each IPEC Collaborative Competency domain determine the focus of each of the curriculum's four stages.

Key concepts are introduced and reinforced during progression through the first three stages of the curriculum, and they are tightly aligned with the learners' expected competency trajectories for each IPEC competency.

The competency expectations for learners across the four curricular stages were developed using the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, and knowledge acquisition expectations using Krathwohl and Anderson’s (2001) Updated Bloom’s Taxonomy.