Education in a changing environment

Hello, just a quick visit to talk about our latest conference attendance. Sarah and I attended the University of Salford's 5th Education in a Changing Environment conference last week both as delegates and presenters.

The Key note address was given by VC Professor Martin Hall who raised some very interesting points on open access of information and the importance of sharing knowledge and expertise as opposed to the current models of intellectual property rights. Interesting points indeed which we will be following closely in terms of how this may impact not just on article publication but also on blogging in the future.

Our poster presentation was on the use of Negotiated Assessments within the MSc Occupational Therapy online programme. In summary the poster explained how we enabled the students to design their learning to their own specific cultural and professional situations and the evaluations the students made on this process. We are hoping to do more work and evaluations on this aspect of the programme this year.

Secondly, we ran a workshop on the use of web 2.0 and social networking sites to enhance student learning. Participants came both from within the university and also from as far afield as Hong Kong and Denmark. Discussions were held as to the value of these applications with specific consideration of professionalism, creating and managing an online identity and some of the ethical dilemmas that may exist in this area. Sarah and I intend to build on this further with more work in the area of building and managing an online identity as a healthcare professional.

Both inclusions were well received and we look forward to engaging in more work in the future within the topic areas.

Then and now

I was tidying through some drawers recently and came across some photographs from my OT Graduation ceremony in 1991. I delved a little deeper and found more pictures from my time at St Katherines College Liverpool, all of which brought back fond memories of places and people I don’t see so much now and I got to reminiscing about my training.

Undoubtedly I had a great time and learned enough to graduate and begin working as an Occupational Therapist. Much of the content and teaching methodology of my training is relevant today, but I do wonder how we managed without the internet, email and computers. My assignments were handwritten and information was gleaned from books or Journals during long hours in the library. Feedback and tutorial support was always face to face and excusing late work by citing the crashing of a computer was unheard of, but many papers were chewed by cats or drenched by coffee at the critical hand in hour (do you know how long it takes to rewrite 4 thousand words by hand!!!).

In light of the increasing use of technology and the now commonplace nature of the internet I wonder if my education was somewhat limited. I don’t feel that it was, but would I study now without making recourse to the internet? I would feel I was missing potentially relevant information and the opportunity for speedy communication with tutors and peers. Not to mention the advantages of file sharing, wikis and of course blogs. But then maybe I am somewhat evangelical about it and I’d be interested to here the views of others who studied before the dawn of technology. Maybe it was actually much simpler then?

Time for something different

I recently attended the COT managers and Educators conference, where one of the keynote sessions was the presentation of the almost completed BA/COT strategic plan. Once again the issue of promoting the profession and seeking to secure the understanding of others is a key feature of the plan, affording an implicit acknowledgement that “others” don’t really know what we do, and that it is our responsibility to educate them.

This is a recurring theme in my almost 20 year career. From beginning my training right up to present time the issue of “what do occupational therapists do?” has been the elephant in the room of many a multi-professional team meeting or management meeting or classroom. Clearly, as a profession (I know many individual OT’s who are quite clear about their role), this question remains current despite all our efforts to date.

So I’m thinking a different approach is needed. After all as someone once said “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. I suggest we should stop focusing on being misunderstood, to stop trying to explain and justify our role, and to stop taking responsibility for educating our colleagues. I’m thinking we should just “do” occupational therapy, confidently and with conviction, and let the results speak for themselves.

And perhaps people are less interested in what we do, or how we do it than in the outcomes we can deliver. According to Karen Middleton (AHP Lead), this is most definitely the case. She reported that commissioners of NHS and Social are services are not interested in how results are achieved, just the results themselves. So maybe our efforts should be directed towards identifying methods for providing information that really is critical, rather than continuing to seek understanding of our role. Or maybe, just maybe, we should break free from the constraints of statutory services and spread our wings?

And just to finish, in case I have left an unanswered question; I completely believe that we must continue to seek the understanding of our clients, as without it informed consent to treatment is negated.

Who shall I be today?

You can be whoever you want to be online….

But is this a good thing?

The undergraduate occupational therapy programme at Salford University endeavours to facilitate student communication and networking via a virtual learning environment (we do also speak face to face to our students in case you were wondering!).

Last year however, some new students told me that they found posting on a discussion forum somewhat intimidating as it offered a permanent record of a particularly difficult moment or flippant comment or less than intelligent thought. They felt that this prevented them using the forum for its’ intended purpose and indeed it became more of an information sharing environment rather than a forum for debate and discussion.

This year, I discovered that it was possible to allow anonymous posting on the forum. Students have taken advantage of this and the discussion forum saw a lot of traffic. So far so good, I thought. But, I have now discovered that anonymous posters may be a little more forthright or personal in their views than identified posters. It is as if the cloak of invisibility removes the “would you say it to there face” test that others on this blog have mentioned before.

Moderating the boards becomes more challenging – constant vigilance is required and some posts have needed to be removed from the forum. Some students have complained that this prevents free speech, and that they are now reluctant to contribute… Back to square one. The boards once again seem to be becoming electronic notice boards rather than a dynamic environment.

The issue was really brought home to me though when one poster (anonymously) commented on the peculiarity of anonymous posting, and another (anonymously) agreed! So what do we do? Allow/disallow anonymous posts? Accept that the boards are being used in a meaningful way even if this is different to how they were originally intended? Police them or leave them? All comments gratefully received.

New beginnings

Next week our new first year students join us for their induction week. I vividly remember the start of my own training at St Catherines College in Liverpool -never did I imagine I would be the Lecturer at the front of the class! The OT programme at Liverpool is now delivered in the University, and is a degree rather that a diploma but much of what I learned stays with me.

I hope that our students will enjoy a training that is challenging, productive and useful. I hope that over time they will develop identies as professional occupational therapists, confident in their abilities to work in a variety of settings with a variety of colleagues and clients. I hope too that they will find their career choice satisfying, rewarding and fun. I know I have (well, most of the time anyway!)

This truly is a new beginning for most of our students - and one which many have already worked extremely hard to secure. We welcome them to our OT community, and look forward to working with them over the coming years. It wont always be easy and we all have much to learn, but together we can.

Is web 2.0 appropriate in occupational therapy education?

I consider myself to be an occupational therapist, an educator, or sometimes even both at the same time, but never would I describe myself as a computer expert. Yet here I am, in the middle of writing a blog, having just set up google reader for RSS streaming, made myself a Del.icio.us site ( for social bookmarking), and considered how best to use wikis to facilitate student projects.

I could not have done this even 6 months ago. So what happened? It was really a case of needs must, in that although the University introduced the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment some time ago, it was only recently that my daily work became dependant on it. Given that I like to appear at least semi-proficient most of the time, I decided I'd better find out about the new learning tools at our fingertips, and this was how I came across blogs and wikis. Interestingly, about 5 months ago students were given the opportunity to incorporate the use of these tools into their learning, but few knew what they were. I suspect that even in this short time, things will have moved on.

Once I saw the potential of web 2.0 technology I was off. I have contributed to discussions on Big Brother, reviewed yutube videos (have you seen the guy singing the occupational therapy song?), discussed OT things with colleagues from around the world and even edited a page of wikipedia. And in doing so, I have learned about communicating online, the differences and similarities between OTs and OT students internationally and I have been challenged in my thinking (is it really a good thing that we can all be so "public" on the internet? What about professional identlity?). In terms of CPD, I think I have developed hugely, and hopefully my colleagues and our students will benefit from this learning.

So I was somewhat disapointed to hear that some Universities frown on the use of web 2.0 citing concerns about academic rigour and plagiarism to name but two. Surely Universities, like all other modern organisations must move with the times, and given the increasing number of OT blogs and online OT Programmes and training appearing on the internet it would seem that the future may be ( at least in part) electronic. I aknowledge that as with anything, web 2.0 has its limitations, but I suggest that to reject it would be to miss an opportunuity to take our profession forward. As OT's we are good at analysing and overcoming barriers - aren't we?
Sarah