Using Generative AI to Enhance Clinical Prioritization and Cultural Competence of Students in Community Health Practice

Primary outcomes

1. Students Perceptions of Interprofessional Clinical Education Revised (SPICE-R)

   Time frame: 2 months

   The SPICE-R instrument contains ten items and three factors dedicated to interprofessional teamwork and team-based practice (items 1, 5, 6, & 8-10), roles/responsibilities for collaborative practice (items 2 & 7), and patient outcomes from collaborative practice (items 3 & 4). The SPICE-R instrument demonstrated reliability and construct validity. The instrument demonstrated validity according to multiple established criteria, and the composite reliability of the overall instrument (i.e., all ten items evaluated together) was high at 0.84.

2. Online Student Engagement questionnaire (OSE)

   Time frame: 2 months

   The questionnaire comprised four factors, namely skills engagement (e.g., taking good notes over readings), emotional engagement (e.g., finding ways to make the course interesting to me), participation engagement (e.g., participating actively in small group discussion forums), and performance engagement (e.g., getting a good grade). The Online Student Engagement (OSE) covered 19 items that measured students' behaviours, thoughts, or feelings regarding the online courses. The items were scored using a 5-point Likert scale. The OSE requires approximately 10-15 min to complete. The maximum possible engagement score was 95, and the maximum scores in the domains of skills engagement, emotional engagement, participation engagement and performance engagement were 30, 25, 30 and 10 respectively. A mean item score of ≥3.5 (total score of ≥66.5) represents a highly engaged student. The OSE exhibited face and concurrent validity and had a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.91.

3. Modified Cultural Awareness Scale (mCAS)

   Time frame: 2 months

   The mCAS is a four-factor measure of cultural awareness, and it possesses satisfactory internal consistency. The Cronbach's alpha value was 0.88 for the total scale and ranged from 0.7 ("cognitive awareness") to 0.9 ("general educational and research experience") for the four subscales. The four factors explained 43.4% of the total variance. All items had a factor loading > 0.3. Factor 1, "general education and research experience," included 15 items and was the strongest factor (16.87% of the total variance). Factor 2, "behaviours/comfort with interactions," included eight items. Factor 3, "cognitive awareness," and factor 4, "clinical issues", included 7 and 5 items. Results support the use of the modified CAS as a generic tool to measure cultural awareness among students in higher education within the health and social care fields.

4. Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL)

   Time frame: 2 months

   Students' perceptions of the technology-driven learning environment were measured using the TEAL instrument (Shroff et al., 2019). This validated survey assesses how students experience active learning when supported by technology. It focuses on four key dimensions: Interprofessional Teamwork (ITR), Prioritization (PRS), Intervention (INT), and Feedback (FEE). The total TEAL score provides a comprehensive view of the students' ability to collaborate and manage tasks effectively within a digital learning framework.