Case Study: Study of Occupation Practice

Project description

Since 2005 occupational therapy students have participated in the Study of Occupation course from first to fourth year, a component of which involves service-learning through the ‘Study of Occupation Practice’ (SOOP) course. The SOOP course involves Junior and Senior Freshmen (SF) students interacting with people and organisations in the community for at least two hours per week across all semesters and is in line with college’s vision for Engagement with Society (Strategic Plan 2009-2014). SF students are required to facilitate occupational engagement (enable a person/group to engage in activities). Key learning outcomes are that the course will develop both students’ attitudes towards people with disabilities or other disadvantage and their understanding of how meaningful occupation enhances health and wellbeing. As an accredited part of their degree programme, students are assessed through presentation at the end of semester two.

Purpose

This funded project aimed to enhance student learning (through online discussion forum and evaluation of same) and the community partners’ experience of the course (through collaborative production of information pamphlet).

1. The use of online discussion forum

The project expanded the support available to students by providing moderated discussion forums through Moodle where students logged on and discussed matters arising as they needed. Students were required to contribute to the online discussion at least once fortnightly.

2. Pamphlet design

Junior Sophister students, in collaboration with community partners and the course coordinator, designed a pamphlet to enhance and streamline communication between college and partners about student-role and course objectives.

Results/ Outcomes 

The process of online discussion forum:

Students were instructed on how to use Moodle and engage in the online discussion forum. Each week’s discussion was themed to enable students to reflect on their experiences in a progressive manner. For instance, the early weeks of the course had themes such as ‘initial thoughts; ‘getting to know your SOOP person’; ‘finding out what you’ll do together’ while, in semester two, examples of discussion themes were ‘is occupational engagement meaningful?’; ‘are you really getting to know your SOOP person?’. Students posted comments under these themes or in relation to other issues of particular importance to them in that period of time. The moderator and other students then responded.  

Student feedback:

Students liked to use the forum to address issues and concerns they were experiencing in practice. As well as engaging in the forum students were required to complete weekly reflective journals. Some students felt that these were an adequate means of reflection and the discussion forum doubled up on this function.

Student’s experience on the SOOP course, including their attitude development towards people with disabilities/disadvantage and opinion of the introduction of the new technology, is being evaluated through a survey and through the analysis of their online discussions and journal entries. Students were invited to complete questionnaires at the start of the course and these will again be administered at the end of the course (end of semester two). Analysis of these should provide more solid indicators of how the use of Moodle might best enhance learning on the course and be revised for future use.  

“This week I think was the best yet. We had a pampering session with the teenage girls. There were only three of them which is a good few less than normal but it turned out to work in everyone's favour as there are three of us volunteering so each teenager got one on one attention. The two girls that I volunteer with painted the girl's nails and painted on designs while I gave them hand massages. It went extremely well as the teenagers said they really enjoyed it and it made them feel relaxed. We were delighted and even more so when they expressed there enthusiasm about having another pampering night. While I was giving one of the girls a hand massage I noticed that her hands shook quite a bit, when we were finished she told me that the massage had really helped her hands. I was absolutely delighted that my small hand massage had made a difference to her. Things are really looking up and we plan to set up more activities in the coming weeks.” Student

“I've just started volunteering with a new person this semester. He's really interested in history and reading. Unfortunately he can't leave his apartment, doesn't have the internet and only a few books on history. So I suggested I'll look up stuff on countries he's interested in. He was really enthusiastic about this and I can tell he's really interested in the info I bring him. I feel like I'm actually facilitating an occupation so it's good!” Student

The process of pamphlet design:

Having discussed the purpose of the SOOP course and pamphlet with the course coordinator six JS students (who each participated in SOOP in 2009-10) drafted a pamphlet that they shared in face-to-face meetings with seven community partners. In these meetings partners provided feedback on what they thought was most important to communicate to community partners (and other members of their organizations) about the student and the course. The students amalgamated this feedback and that from the course coordinator into a final draft which was emailed to partners for their comments.

Partner feedback:

All partners who were contacted to collaborate in this project were eager to do so. Their feedback provided a new understanding of how they perceive the students and SOOP course. Initial feedback from partners identified the need for the pamphlet to explain the process involved in the SOOP course and its benefits from the students’ and their service users’ perspectives. Some thought that practical issues such as insurance cover and garda clearance needed to be addressed. Others noted the importance of highlighting the unique attributes of occupational therapy students and advised to include student-narratives of their experiences. The pamphlet was designed to reflect these recommendations.

The feedback from community partners on draft two of the pamphlet focused on clarity of information and purpose and the pamphlet was refined accordingly.

Application of pamphlet in practice:

A copy of the pamphlet is attached. Unfortunately, it will not be used in practice until the 2011-12 student cohort begin their SOOP course. It is planned to send each partner several copies of the pamphlet before students begin the course so that they may forward this to whom ever in their organisation they refer the student to. Each student will also be equipped with a pamphlet so that they may do likewise.

Lessons Learnt

Historically students were supported in this course through classroom-based debriefing sessions with the course coordinator. Because these sessions were offered to small groups of students at a time on average students attended once every three weeks. Given the infrequency of these sessions and the variation across volunteering experiences, the sessions mainly trouble-shot; consequently they were proving an inadequate means of 1. enhancing and tracking students’ thinking development and 2. providing them with ideas for activities.

Additionally, in 2009-10, it was noted that there was some confusion as to students’ role and purpose when working in the community. This may have stemmed from the fact that, in some cases, there were several layers of person-contact within a given community setting. For instance, the person with whom the course coordinator collaborated may assign the students to work in various areas of the organisation; therefore the person representing the community partner with whom the students had dealings may not fully understand the purpose of the SOOP course. Additionally, some partners did not differentiate the SOOP course – a service learning course – from a practice education experience and had expectations that students should perform as if on clinical practice.  

Resources required

To develop this project it was essential to have a moderator to guide students in the online discussion. It was particularly desirable that this moderator would have experience of the course and training in moderation (offered by the Centre for Learning Technology).

Additionally, it was necessary to have the resources (financial or otherwise) to develop and print the pamphlets. This meant supporting students to visit community partners and paying for printing.

Much data will be generated around students’ learning and opinions of the course through the pre and post course student-survey, anonymised online discussions forum and reflective journals. Hiring a research assistant to work with this data, preparing it for and conducting initial analysis, is essential to the evaluation of the project. 

Supporting attendance at conferences/ workshops and purchasing materials relating to service learning has been an important element in the development of the SOOP course 2010-11 and when integrated with learning from the project evaluation will prove even more important in the development of the course in future years.