Capturing students' learning experiences and academic emotions at an interprofessional training ward

Abstract

An important goal for interprofessional education (IPE) in clinical settings is to support healthcare students in collaboratively developing their understanding of interprofessional teamwork. The aim of this study was to investigate students' learning experiences and academic emotions as they occur in actual context in relation to collaborative and trialogical activities during a clinical IPE course. The contextual activity sampling system methodology was used to collect data via mobile phones. Thirty-seven healthcare students (medical, nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy) reported their experiences, learning activities and academic emotions several times a day via their mobile phones during their 2-week course at an interprofessional training ward (IPTW). The results provided understanding of the students' experiences of their academic emotions and how they created new knowledge collaboratively. These collaborative knowledge creation activities occurred mostly when students from different professions were collaborating as a team (e.g. discussing patient care or participating in a ward round) and were also significantly related to optimal experiences, i.e. "flow" (high challenge in combination with high competence). In conclusion, these results emphasize the importance of collaboration among students during IPTW courses. Our results might help to optimize the design of IPE learning activities in clinical healthcare contexts. © 2013 Informa UK, Ltd.