Designing Interprofessional Education Experiences to Cultivate Collaborative Repertoires in Graduate Students

Donnelly et al. (2025) sketched a half-day workshop for ABA graduate students. The plan pairs them with speech and OT trainees to practice talking respectfully and writing joint goals.

The paper is theoretical. It gives step-by-step activities but no test data.

The authors offer a ready-to-run lesson plan, not outcome numbers. They map each activity to behavior-analytic principles like modeling and rehearsal.

Boivin et al. (2021) tried something similar at Melmark. They added real clinical rotations with SLP, OT, PT, and pediatric teams. Their report is a case story, so we still lack hard numbers. Donnelly keeps the idea but shrinks it to one workshop.

Spencer et al. (2026) extend the same line. They tuck collaboration training into community-engaged scholarship and add families as partners. Where Donnelly stops at student-to-student practice, Spencer pushes the boundary to student-to-community.

Weiss et al. (2020) give the closest empirical peek. They ran a summer practicum with SLP and special-ed students and saw gains in knowledge and comfort. The design was pre-post, no control, but it shows a short mixed-discipline stint can move self-report scores.

You can lift the Donnelly script next term. Schedule one afternoon, invite neighboring programs, and let trainees role-play IEP meetings. Use the Deborah results to sell the idea to your dean: a brief practicum already boosted student confidence. If you want to go bigger, borrow Spencer’s twist and add a parent panel. Start small, measure comfort before and after, and build from there.