Preparing students to be informed, open-minded, and engaged for large Interprofessional Education (IPE) activities that take place in the late afternoon or other unfavorable times can be challenging. Use of innovative, technology-inclusive approaches can help educators improve readiness for interprofessional collaboration. This presentation describes the model we adopted, shares lessons learned, and offers suggestions for improvement. IPEC 502 is a semester-long required IPE course for 500+ learners from medicine (MD), nursing (BSN) and pharmacy (PharmD) to learn about collaborative patient-centered care, quality improvement and patient safety with and from each other. Asynchronous individual learning and an individual readiness assurance test (IRAT) introduce students to the content they will apply in active learning exercises with their small interprofessional team during four 90-minute in-person sessions. Many learners perceive the preparatory activities as busy work. Narrated PowerPoint videos used in the past made the content more appealing, but the videos were long and dry. In 2025, we used a generative AI tool to create an informative, engaging, student-friendly podcast for each module to supplement static digital material. We captured reactions in our course evaluation survey, which was completed by 93% of enrolled students. Overall, 66% agreed or strongly agreed that the podcasts contributed to their learning, but the reaction varied by profession, with nursing students in greater agreement (74%) compared to pharmacy (62%) and medicine (59%). It is important to note that BSN nursing students were in the last semester of their program, whereas medical and pharmacy students were in pre-clinical phases of their curriculum. 171 students (37%) reported that they stopped listening to the podcasts after the first two modules. Reasons included: preferring to read (37%), preferring static slides (35%), and preferring multimedia (12%). 30% could tell podcasts were AI-generated, and 22% stated they were too busy or the podcasts were boring. While we assessed both Level 1 and Level 2 outcomes for the course using the modified Kirkpatrick evaluation framework, this presentation is focused on reaction (Level 1) to the podcasts. Quantifying measurable learning outcomes of student perceptions about specific teaching modalities is critical for preparing students for interprofessional collaborative practice by ensuring students will engage with the content, learn the material (Level 2), and ultimately be able to apply it in practice (Level 3). If they are not willing to engage, we need to know why!
