Second Life Research

Some of you may be aware that Sarah and myself have been working on a Second Life project for the last year.  As part of a successful bid to engage in a project for the VC’s Media City Iconic projects award we have developed (together with Lee Griffiths - Lecturer in Computer Science and Joe Brindle Post Graduate Computer Science student) an environment within a multi-user virtual environment (Second Life). This takes the form of a home environnment (complete with kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, stairs and furniture) and encourages the user to consider basic apects of access, occupational participation and potential envioronmental adaptations for a wheelchair user.

The first phase of the house has been completed and we have now received ethical approval to carry out a qualitative research project with some of our undergraduate students to consider their experiences of learning in this enviornment. It is expected that these results, together with the Systematic Literature Review currently underway (by our Summer Scholarship student Alex Moss - recent occupational therapy graduate from Queen Maragaret's University in Edinburgh) will inform the project further with plans for a quantitative comparative study in the pipeline and work with both education and practice environments.


Potential Benefits to HCP and Students

Most health care professionals have an element of experiential learning in their pre-registration programmes in order that they can have the opportunity to practice new skills and behaviours in a tangible, reality based but safe environment (Pimental 1999). Unfortunately the organisation and implementation of such learning experiences can be extremely resource intensive in relation to staffing, time, costs and equipment or facilities, and the experience must be carefully guided and facilitated in order to focus student engagement (Lai et al 2005)

Potential Benefits to Service Users

Service users with long term serious disabilities often experience occupational alienation, and part of their rehabilitation is to embed within them a sense of self efficacy and control in managing their own environments and activities (Wilcock 1998). This can be difficult to do in the real world, again due to time and resourse constraints, as well as a need for careful risk management

A virtual or therapeutic experience could address such challenges and the use of innovative technologies to address health care education and practice is encouraged (DOH 2009, Freeman 2008, NHS Faculty of Health Informatics (2008). JISC certainly encourages innovation in providing "technology-rich learning environments that are sustainable, accessible and reflect an understanding of the learning styles, preferences and diversity of their users" (www.jisc.ac.uk) . Whilst as yet there is not an extensive body of research exploring the use of virtual worlds in heath care education or practice, Kashani et al (2009 p5) recommend that health care professions be involved in collaborative research with developers of virtual worlds by "approaching disciplines that incorporate the influence of cultural, social and physical environments, such as occupational therapy in order to develop "more inclusive user interfaces".

Whilst there has been some research in this area (Freeman 2008, Kashani et al 2009) the issue of experiencing occupational participation and deprivation in a virtual way has not been extensively addressed.

Sarah and I are currently getting ready to recruit our participants from our new undergraduate intake. Induction to the Second Life experience has been planned and - fingers crossed- we are ready to roll. We'll keep you informed how we get on.

References
DOH (2009) New education Bodies created to promote innovation in the NHS - http//www.dh.gov.uk/en/News/Recentstories
Freeman D (2008) Studying and treating Schizophrenia Unsig Virtual reality: A new Paradigm. Schizophrenia Bullitin. 34(4) 605-610 /DH_110419
Joint Information Systems Committee. (2007). Game-based learning. E-learning innovation programme. Briefing papers. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/pub_gamebasedlearningBP.aspx accessed 5.3.10
Joint Information Systems Committee (2010) http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/learningenvironments.aspx accessed 5.3.10
Kashani, R.M., Robets, A., Jones, R., Boulos, M.K., (2009) Virtual Worlds, Colllective Responses and Responsibilities in Health Journal of Virtual Worlds Vol 2 Number 2
Lai CH Yang JC Chen FC Ho CW Liang JS and Chan TW (2005) Improving experiential learning with mobile technologies. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE2005) 141 145. IEEEE Computer Society press, Los Alamitos, CA.
NHS Faculty of Health Informatics (2008) The power and perils of using social networking tools in the NHS. NHS Faculty of Health Informatics: London.
Pimental J R (1999) Design of net-learning systems based on experiential learning. Journal of Asynchronous Learning network 3 (2) 64-90
Wilcock, A. (1998). An occupational perspective on health. Thorofare NJ: Slack ink. (Chapter 6)
University of Salford Strategic Plan 2009/10 to 2017/18, (2009). http://staff.salford.ac.uk/transforming/documents/university_of_salford_strategic_plan.pdf

Occupational Therapy in the UK

Educational and professional development in the uk

View more presentations from angeladh.

Have been doing a bit of housekeeping with my files and came across this presentation I delivered in 2007 to Universite de Miguel Hernadez, Alicante, Spain. Thought some of you might be interested in how occupational therapists are educated and develop a career structure in the UK. There are spanish translations on the slides (my aplogies if they are not very accurate!)

Student Presentations

This official picture from Conference is much better than the rubbish one I took on my mobile so I though I would post this one instead. The smartly dressed man you see in the picture is Jason Vickers, second level student with us at The University of Salford. He was one of 6 students presenting at the conference and everyone in the audience, and subsequent comments on Facebook, have all agreed that they were some of the best presentations of the whole conference. It was great to see that the future of our profession is in their hands and it spurred us on to ensure that we encourage other students to follow in Jason's footsteps!

Day Two of COT conference....

 Awoke after 3and a half hours sleep to a bright sunny morning again - and the news that the northwest was worried about drought (3 days sun in a row after months of wet weather and even floods not that long ago in Cumbria!).

It was an early morning start as Sarah and I were presenting our seminar at 8.30am (online identity, reputation and professional practice). What we anticipated being a poorly attended session, competing with sun, the beach and the Unison Party of the night before turned out to be a well attended session that created discussion with plenty of question and what appeared to be a positive shift in some towards creating their own online identities. Many left with the promise (or threat?!) of googling both Sarah and myself to consider our online presence and reputation (let's hope we practice what we preach!!).

After we finished we wandered down to the beach for a well deserved ice cream and met with Hassan and Zoe from COT and spent a really pleasant half hour or so sitting in the sun and chatting about a variety of issues around professional and educational issues. Then back inside for a look at the poster exhibitions etc.
Now. it is a known rule that you can't go to the seaside and not eat fish and chips, so at lunch we abandoned the queues for sandwiches and went to a little fish and chip shop at the sea front and indulged ourselves before heading back to the Plenary session where merit awards, Fellowship awards and Honorary Fellowship awards were given to deserving recipients - including a merit award for Jane Clewes from the North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare Trust who has had involvement with our team at the university for a number of years as a placement educator and visiting practitioner/lecturer on many occasions - Congratulations Jane!
The Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture was delivered this year by Dr Avril Drummond from the University of Nottingham whose message can be summarised as " todays treatment is yesterday's research" urging all occuaptional therapists to become more research active to enhance and increase the evidence -base of the profession.

Sarah and Jackie then went to deliver their poster discussion session so I took the opportunity to visit the Brighton Pavilion and have a short walk through the Lanes and the North Laine. Brighton is certainly a very cosmopolitan and relaxed place with a great diversity of people - I could people watch there for days and not get bored! Unfortunately an hour or so was all I could spare. Eventually we managed to get everyone from the team together for a jug of Pimms on the beach once the conference had finished for the day. In discussing our experiences so far of the conference it is worth noting that:
a) if the future of the profession is in the hands of the students that delivered the College-led session of student papers (including our 2nd year student Jason Vickers) then the future looks very rosy indeed. Their breadth of thinking and use of theory was outstanding
b) that the world of OT is a very small one indeed!
c) networking opportunities are the backbone of the conference experience - but beware - your past can catch up with you (see (b) above)!

I decided that I was too tired to go out for a meal with the rest of the team so stayed behind and sat watching the sea for an hour or so - then bumped into a colleague who had also stayed behind so we decided to find somewhere to eat together. On the way to a chosen destination, esteemed colleague and friend was "pooped" on from a great height by a seagull. Funniest thing ever!!!! Was laughing so hard that was unable to help with the explosion that had hit practically every surface on said colleague. Colleague not impressed!! So, after returning to the hotel and changing we started again - ever watchful of the skies above but managed to return with no further incident.

After a lovely meal, and a very pleasant evening I finally made it back to the hotel and packed in readiness for check out tomorrow and the final day of conference.