Research Foundations for Dietitians

Evergreen course



The Centre for Advanced Learning (CAL) is excited to bring you the Research Foundations for Dietitians Evergreen course. 

Audience: Dietitians with 1-3 years of experience in practice. This course can also be useful as a refresher if you are returning to practice in this area. 

Course learning objectives: 

  • Increase understanding of evaluating a range of scientific literature
  • Describe the purpose of undertaking research in nutrition and dietetics 
  • Understand research design and methods in the context of nutrition and dietetics and possible methods of application in an nutrition and dietetics setting
  • Understand how dietary assessment methods and statistical tests are used in nutrition and dietetics research
  • Develop clear and specific aims and objectives as well as methodology and evaluation to answer nutrition-related issues in a variety of settings

Access to the course: New registrants will be uploaded to the Learning Management System (LMS) within one week of registering online. Once you have been uploaded to the LMS, you will have ongoing access for 12 months to the course and associated materials. 

CPD hours: This course is worth 20 CPD hours collectively. You will need to manually enter your CPD hours for this course. 

Certificates: Upon completing of the course, you will be able to download your certificate from the Learning Management System. 

Course overview

This Evergreen course consists of 4 unique modules. We have redesigned our course structure to provide you more flexibility in your registration options. 

For this course, you can choose to register for the whole course at once, OR you can choose to register for the individual module(s) that are relevant to you. 

Each module is outlined in detail below. 

Module 1: Research methods for nutrition & dietetic research

This module is individually worth 5 CPD hours.

Module 1 learning outcomes:

  • Identify and define a research problem
  • Use the PI/ECO framework to develop an evidence-based research question
  • Describe the components of quantitative, qualitative and mixed method study designs
  • Demonstrate understanding of applying appropriate study designs and research processes in variety of dietetic areas of practice

Module 2: Dietary assessment methods used in research

This module is individually worth 5 CPD hours.

Module 2 learning outcomes:

  • Understand the importance of dietary assessment in research
  • Describe dietary assessment methods and identify appropriate methods for different research contexts
  • Demonstrate and understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of dietary assessment methods
  • Understand the role technology could plays in dietary assessment

Module 3: Basic biostatistics in nutrition research

This module is individually worth 5 CPD hours.

Module 3 learning outcomes:

  • Understand the role of biostatistics in nutrition research
  • Define statistical concepts: variables and basic descriptive and inferential statistics
  • Understand statistical significance and how to interpret basic statistics in nutrition and dietetics research
  • Identify different statistical packages used in research

Module 4: Practical considerations when planning a research project

This module is individually worth 5 CPD hours.

Module 4 learning outcomes:

  • Understand how to build a research team and collaborate with other researchers for capacity building
  • Identify types of projects that can be undertaken with based on the resources available (for example: skills, capacity and budget)
  • Understand & describe the components of a research protocol
  • Develop a research protocol

Course pricing

$125

(incl. GST)

$175 for non-Dietitians Australia members

INDIVIDUAL MODULE(S)

     Choose only the module(s) that apply to your practice.          

$425

(incl. GST)

$595 for non-Dietitians Australia members

FULL COURSE PACKAGE

Receive a 15% discount for purchasing all modules in this course.

For information about group registration discounts, please contact education@dietitiansaustralia.org.au.

Meet the educators

Laureate Professor Clare Collins 

Clare is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle in Australia. She is also a Fellow of Dietitians Australia. She loves nutrition and does a lot of research related to healthy eating to improve health and well-being. She has published over 400 research papers and supervised several research studies and research students. Clare currently leads a large team of dietitian researchers who have a major focus on using smart technologies for the assessment of dietary intake and evaluation of nutrition interventions in key life stages and chronic health conditions. Clare is passionate about nutrition research and loves translating the latest scientific evidence into practical strategies that help people to adopt healthier eating habits, feel better and improve their health.

Professor Tracy Burrows 

Tracy is a Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle in Australia and a Fellow of Dietitians Australia. She is passionate about all things food, food behaviours, and communicating high quality, evidence-based information about diet and nutrition. Tracy has published over 150 research papers and is involved in all aspects of teaching; from undergraduate through to postgraduate, where she supervises a variety of students. Tracy has a focus on dietary assessment methods where she employs novel biomarkers as objective measures of diet, child obesity and translation community to clinical services and food addiction, which is a rapidly emerging area of research.

Associate Professor Lesley McDonald-Wicks

Lesley is an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian and esteemed nutrition researcher. Lesley wants to know what role our diets play in mitigating disease risk factors associated with chronic disease such as stroke and mental illness. She is head of discipline for nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle, and highly involved in teaching undergraduate students and supervising postgraduate students. As a qualified facilitator of the Healthy Conversations Skills program, Lesley uses this program to teach clinical reasoning and communication to students and colleagues to assist health professionals in having behaviour change conversations with clients. She has published over 90 research papers.

Associate Professor Amanda Patterson 

Amanda is an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian and Program Convenor for the Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle. She has extensive experience in nutritional epidemiology, specifically with the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health. She also has experience running randomised control trials, especially in relation to iron deficiency in women, and the role of diet on general health, wellbeing, cognition, fatigue and mental health. Amanda has over 20 years’ experience in teaching undergraduate dietetics students and in supervising research students (honours, masters and PhD). She has published over 80 research papers.

Associate Professor Leanne Brown 

Leanne is an Associate Professor and Academic Lead (Teaching and Learning), at the University of Newcastle, Department of Rural Health (UONDRH). As an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian, Leanne has more than 25 years’ experience in the dietetics profession. Leanne worked as a clinical dietitian for eight years before becoming a rural-based academic at the UONDRH, based in Tamworth. Her work is readily translational to public health programs that can change health outcomes, especially in a rural context. Leanne’s research initiatives are focussed on the rural health workforce, health service delivery and research translation that improves the health or rural people. Leanne has over 50 publications and is actively involved in the supervision of research students.

Dr Melinda Hutchesson 

Melinda is an Accredited Practising Dietitian, and Senior Lecturer in Nutrition & Dietetics at the University of Newcastle. Melinda has extensive experience in teaching undergraduate nutrition and dietetics students core research skills, including dietary assessment methods. She also leads a research program that focuses on preventing mental ill-health and chronic disease through health behaviour change, with a specific focus on the young adult population. She leads a number of projects in this space, including evidence synthesis, along with observational and experimental research.  Melinda has over 100 publications.

Dr Rebecca Haslam 

Dr Rebecca Haslam is a Newcastle-based Accredited Practising Dietitian and Postdoctoral Nutrition researcher at the University of Newcastle. Her areas of expertise are dietary biomarkers, effectiveness of dietary interventions for chronic disease prevention and treatment and the clinical application of nutrition interventions.  Rebecca also has a passion for sports nutrition which she focuses on through her work in private practice and incorporates into a range of research projects.

Dr Katherine Brain 

Katherine is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Early Career Researcher with a focus on the role of nutrition in pain management. She continues an ongoing collaboration between dietetic researchers at the University of Newcastle and clinicians at Hunter Integrated Pain Service. Katherine is also currently working as a lecturer at the University of Newcastle. Her work spans the spectrum from clinical to academic work with her research focusing on bridging the gap between nutrition and pain. She also holds several leadership and advocacy roles such as the Dietitians Australia representative on the Australian Pain Society Relationships Committee, Board member of Chronic Pain Australia and Convenor of Dietitian’s Australia Aged Care and Rehabilitation Interest Group.

Dr Susan Heaney 

Susan is the Academic Team Leader Mid North Coast with the University of Newcastle Department of Rural health. She is an Accredited Practising Dietitian with a strong clinical background and student education focus. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Sydney in 2012 for her project which aimed to develop a Screening Instrument to Identify Nutrition Risk in Athletes. Susan was the UON Nutrition and Dietetics Placement Coordinator for 7 years and is keenly interested in all things related to student placements and inter professional education.

Frequently asked questions

Who is this course for? 

Dietitians with 1-3 years' experience in practice. 

This course can be useful for new graduate dietitians, or for more experienced dietitians who are new to this area or would like a refresher before returning to practice within this area after some time away. 

How long will I have access to the course? 

Once you have been uploaded onto the Learning Management System (LMS), you will have on-going access for 12 months to the course and associated materials. 

Do I need to complete the course in any order?

This course is self-paced, which means you can do as little or as much as you like at any given time. It is recommended that you start at the first module and then progress through to the last, as each module will build on knowledge from the previous modules. 

How do I access the course?

Once you have registered for the course it takes up to a week to be uploaded to the Learning Management System (LMS). If you have previously enrolled in a CAL course, you can locate this course under the 'My Courses' tab once you have logged into the LMS. If you are a new user, you will receive an automated email from the LMS informing you of your enrolment and password within a week of registering. This automated email will go to the same email address that you registered to the course with, be sure to check your junk inbox if you have not received it.

Was this course peer-reviewed?

Yes, this course was peer-reviewed in 2022. This course is scheduled for review in 2025.  

How long will it take me to complete the course? 

Since this course is self-paced, the number of hours will vary from participant to participant, however it is expected that this course in its entirety will take approximately 20 hours to complete. You will need to manually upload your CPD hours for this course. 

What are the course requirements?

To receive your Professional Certificate, you will need to view all course materials and then successfully complete the assessment item. Don't worry, you will have unlimited attempts!

Contact

The Education Centre team

E: education@dietitiansaustralia.org.au

P: 02 6189 1202

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