Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a well-established, evidence-based practice for addressing a range of clinical problems across multiple settings and systems. This 40-hour certificate course offers participants an opportunity to develop competencies in MI practice. Course design includes highly interactive seminars, workbook readings, written assignments, and fidelity reviews of practice samples with performance-based feedback. Throughout the course, you will be observing, practicing, and applying person-centered MI skills of: Engaging, Focusing, Evoking, and Planning. At completion, participants will be able to demonstrate the requisite attitudes, knowledge, and skills (competency) in order to practice MI with fidelity and begin the initial integration of MI into their routine practices.
The certificate course is designed to:
• Describe Motivational Interviewing (MI) purpose, benefits, and limitations
• Identify key concepts, attitudes, processes, skills, and strategies of MI
• Describe Engaging tasks and behaviors
• Identify MI-consistent attitudes for Engaging
• Describe Focusing tasks and apply strategies for agenda setting
• Recognize client change talk, sustain talk, and discord
• Describe Evoking tasks and apply strategies to cultivate change talk and soften sustain talk
• Identify MI-consistent attitudes for Focusing and Evoking
• Recognize client signals of readiness for Planning
• Describe planning tasks and apply strategies for goal setting and change planning
• Identify MI-consistent attitudes for Planning
• Design a personal MI competency-based professional development plan
The 40-hour course structure includes: • Three two-day seminars held at the UW–Madison Pyle Center, 9am to 4pm, for a total of 36 classroom hours. • Self-study from an assigned MI workbook for a total of three hours. • Discussion board posting on Learn@UW(Canvas), UW-Madison’s online learner management system, for a total of one hour. • Submission of practice samples. The most valid method for assessing skillful practice in MI is through coding of student practice samples. Practice samples are 15-minute audio recordings of MI practice. Three recordings are done during the two-day seminars. A fourth recording is done after the final with a standardized client, then later played back and reviewed with a standard fidelity instrument: the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity, version 4.2.1. Participants receive written feedback from the instructors using the fidelity review.
