Students took an active role in the TEACH! curriculum
IU IPE was awarded a Curriculum Enhancement Grant by the IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning to fund, “Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL) in an Interprofessional Practice and Education Curriculum” last year.
The funding enabled us to create new opportunities for 12 students to become peer leaders in the TEACH! curriculum – Sammie Bane, Caylin Billingsley, Shannon Castek, Ashritha Dandam, Lindsey Eble, Ben Gonzalez, Parvati Naliyatthalityazchayil, Anne Elise Pennington, Jared Smith, Sumeet Toor, Maryann Waters, and Max Yan – representing physical therapy, pharmacy, health informatics, public safety management, public health, physician assistant, medicine, nursing, biology, and chemistry education programs.
Reflecting on the experience, Sammie Bane, a Physical Therapy student, said, “Being a PLTL has been an incredibly valuable experience, as I have had the opportunity to further develop my leadership skills and have learned how to effectively engage individuals from different professions in a collaborative manner in order to achieve a common goal”.
Ashritha Dandam, a Health Informatics student, shared a similar experience, “It has rewarded me with the accomplishment and satisfaction of helping my peers. Helping my peers gain a better grasp of the subject material…The learning experience continues with the subject material as well that is the depth of the material presented to my peers becomes much more apparent. I have had an invaluable opportunity to make many contributions and I would readily recommend to any student to serve as a Peer Leader.”
After receiving positive evaluations from the PLTL’s, the IPE Center will look to expand the program to include more learners. In the meantime, the Center is in the process of developing a student interest group around interprofessional practice and education for those individuals who would like to engage and research more into this field of work. Please email ipectr@iu.edu if your students are interested in participating.