Shared learning : Monitoring the attitudinal changes of staff and students on undergraduate health care professional programmes.

The aim of this investigation was to monitor attitudinal changes of staff and students participating in undergraduate professional programmes to the implementation of shared learning over a four-year period. The programmes being studied were the BSc. Occupational Therapy, BSc. Diagnostic Radiography and BSc. Therapeutic Radiography Honours degrees. Each validated programme contained some syllabus areas that were taught together i.e. were shared across the professions.Initially, after a review of the existing literature on this issue, a questionnaire was designed as a research tool to enable both qualitative and quantitative data to be collected and analysed. The quantitative sections of the questionnaire were checked for reliability throughout the four years and achieved positive Cronbach Alpha results ranging from .7083 to .8984 in the four main concepts under investigation, namely the Pitfalls, Benefits, Curriculum Aspects and Social Aspects of the shared programmes.Over the four year period a total of 418 student questionnaires were collected and analysed. In addition to the quantitative data collected, qualitative data were also collected from the questionnaire from extracts of the minutes of Course Committee and Examination Board meetings and from videos of tutorials and seminars. All of these were analysed.The results showed fluctuations in the attitudes of both staff and students to shared learning over the four year period, but all those who participated showed a net favourable change in attitude by the end of the research investigation.