To meet the needs of a new European landscape of patients and health requirments this project aims to bring occupational therapy to a new level of professional identity and intercultural skills by intensive training face to face and web-based learning cross European universities and other community partners. Students, teachers and researchers from different European countries will work together to shape a European perspective within the field of occupational therapy and health sciences. Therapy profession, expanding opportunities to interact with other universities and health care systems. The proposed projects will:1. Combine the expertise of three universities to explore and offer innovative ways of meeting the educational needs of occupational therapists and evaluate these outcomes to demonstrate how working with ‘real’ projects in a contextualised manner which engages students differently develops their understanding. 2. Use the international community to strengthen and deepen professional identity to encourage students to work confidently with an occupationally focused approach. This unique approach aims to bring about transformational change to small and isolated groups in society. 3. Further develop an intercultural skilled workforce who can support the increasingly diverse populations of all partner countries to meet the needs of global health concerns.4. Develop a future workforce with the confidence and skills to work within the European and global work market to address global health and societal issues.The project will impact directly on 420 students and 35 staff from the 3 participating institutions. Approximately 84 community projects impacting directly and indirectly on 21,000 participants will be undertaken with opportunities to further this number through links with new partners. This does not include the ongoing impact of the work or the long term impact on the practice of the students involved in the project once qualified. Four types of activity will be used to achieve the objectives:1. Physical exchange learning week - Students will participate in education, practice and research based activities with community partners, focusing on how occupational therapists may support socially isolated groups in society to improve their health and wellbeing. Students and staff will work in mixed groups to develop professional knowledge, skills, professional identity, and language and cultural competencies. 2. Development of web-exchange and digital technologies to internationalise the classroom - Over a 10 week period mixed groups of students from each University will form a web-exchange group. They will establish informal relationships with one another learning about their educational programmes, healthcare and other sector systems. Each country will draw on authentic project work with their community partners considering the occupational needs of particular individuals, groups and communities. They will discuss and debate the similarities and differences in OT practice and consider how occupational issues might be solved differently. 3. Extend web-exchange partners - During the 3 year project the participating institutions will share links with existing partners and develop further European partners to expose the students to greater diversity, intercultural aspects and worldwide occupationally focussed solutions. 4. Staff exchange - The project aims to develop a clear and coherent scoping of staff working within all participating institutions to identify where staff may contribute to one another’s curriculum offering research expertise, new knowledge and innovative educational approaches. The project will strengthen the professional identity of occupational therapists who assert that meaningful engagement in everyday meaningful activities can influence health and wellbeing of socially excluded and marginalised groups. The projects will offer marginalised groups opportunities to have their stories heard and acknowledged while preparing graduates to think creatively about complex situations. Students and staff will offer solutions that benefit not only the service users but also families and communities and the organisations they work with so that they may make choices, and take control of their lives and aspirations. The project will develop guidelines on how the classroom might be “internationalised” in a different way so that all students can be included and begin to develop cultural competencies that will impact on their future practice in increasingly internationalised practice within their own countries. These opportunities will increase students’ confidence in addressing issues of international communities and encourage them to interact with web-based technologies to discuss with other professionals how social exclusion might be solved differently with local, national and international impact.
Context/background of the project; The project was informed by a previous pilot in 2012 between Lund University (LU) and University of Southampton (UoS). Here, students participated in a programme of education, practice and research based activities both face to face and virtually to develop professional knowledge, skills and identity as well as language and cultural competencies. Objectives of the project; - To bring the expertise of three universities together to explore innovation in meeting the educational needs of occupational therapy students. - To use the international community to strengthen and deepen students’ professional identity - To enable students to use occupationally focused approaches to make transformational change to small and isolated groups in society - To develop an interculturally skilled workforce to support increasingly diverse populations in all partner countries. - To develop a workforce with both confidence and skills to work in the European and global market. Number and profile of participating organisations; The three partner Universities – Lund University (LU), University of Southampton (UoS) and the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway) were the primary participants. In addition, 76 community partner organisations across five countries and invited keynote speakers collaborated over the three years of the project. In the final year of the project three other Universities (University of Vic (UoV), Bournemouth University (BU) and Riga Stradins University (RSU) participated in the virtual learning activity. Description of undertaken main activities; Physical Exchanges Three five days physical exchanges took place: 2016 to LU; 2017 to UoS and 2018 to NUI Galway. In total 299 students participated during the three years. The theme for the first year at LU was occupational needs through models and frameworks in the second year was emerging areas of practice and in the third year was dissemination. In all exchanges, there were keynote speakers on the theme, students visited and spoke with community partners and presented their findings at a conference on the final day. Web Exchanges Three web exchanges also took place. In total 344 students participated over the three years. The students engaged in virtual discussions over some weeks exploring how an occupation-focused perspective might support vulnerable and excluded groups in all three countries. Students also met with vulnerable and excluded groups/communities. A variety of learning materials to support learning were developed and in 2017 and 2018 students presented findings at a web conference. In 2019, three additional partners – Bournemouth University (BU), University of Vic (UoV) and Riga Stradins University (RSU) participated. Students from pairs of universities collaborated as before and findings and the results of the discussions were presented in a virtual ePoster and discussion of findings facilitated by a lecturer. Intellectual Output 1 The aim of this output was to evaluate the impact of the internationalisation programme on students’ professional identity. A tool to measure professional identity was developed and tested psychometrically and used to evaluate students’ level of professional identity. Results suggest that the tool is psychometrically sound and that the physical exchange predicted 34% of the variability in professional identity scores. Intellectual Output 2 Offered a set of educational course material. A video outlining aspects of occupational and social justice was used at the beginning of each exchange (both physical and web based). The video was supplemented by multiple choice questions which students answered and discussed in small groups and a case study which was used to generate further understanding of human rights. Intellectual Output 3 A detailed web based handbook which can be used by other institutions introducing similar blended initiatives has been developed. The handbook details the physical and web exchanges including information on preparation and organisation of both. The use of virtual and web based technology to support activities, and project management is described in the Handbook. Results and impact attained; In total 76 staff and 643 students participated in the various exchanges and over the three years worked in partnership with 76 community partner organisations. The impact was twofold – students gained experience in collaborative working, experienced how health and social care delivery differed in other countries and gained a higher level of professional identity. Community organisations gained a sustainable deliverable in each case. Longer-term benefits; - Identification of a platform for students to carry out international group work which can be used in future collaborations - Use of e-posters to communicate findings across six sites - Staff collaboration in development of learning resources which can be used both locally and in future collaborations.