Promoting and Evaluating Competence in On-Line Dietetics Education

Professional organizations, such as the American Dietetic Association are challenged to assure competency of their practitioners. Competency includes higher-level skills such as critical-thinking, cooperative work, effective communication, and use of lifelong learning resources. Information literacy via computer technology is a key component of competency, which needs to be included in dietetic education and training. This dietetic internship examined use of online technology to develop competency using the key-feature exam. Seventy-five dietetic interns from three different programs were divided into those with (n=44) and without (n=31) online instruction, to which pre- and post-test key feature exams were administered. Those with online instruction had greater improvement ( P