I was just packing up tonight to head home on my bike, reflecting on my last supervision session with an occupational therapist, when Karen popped up on my gmail chat. I stopped to have a quick chat as I’ve hardly had any contact with Karen this year (since I’ve been so quiet online). She was talking about how she was assisting a friend with skills in what I would call skim reading (hopefully I’ve got this right Karen?). After finding out a bit about what they were doing, I suggested that Karen and her friend checked out the VARK website. It seemed to me that perhaps in part her friend may be struggling as she is perhaps more visual, kinesthetic or aural as opposed to a read/writer.

Karen went to the online questionnaire and completed this while we were ‘chatting’. Not surprisingly (well to me anyway).. Karen came out as a reader/writer – perhaps explaining her comfortableness with blogging as a mechanism for developing active reflection. We chatted a bit about the value of completing the questionnaire (and yes I know these have inherent weaknesses!).. but they are a great tool to stimulate the discussions between a student and fieldwork supervisor, or between students in group – while some students must read every word on a worksheet (reader/writers) and others just want to get on with the tasks (kinesthetic). So I find it to be a great tool for facilitating the discussions that can strengthen or clarify expectations between two or more people who need to work well together. Karen has promised a posting on this in the next few days so I’ll look forward to reading her reflections and hearing whether she has managed to get her peer group to complete it as well!!!

And if you are wondering about me.. I’m actually kinesthetic, followed by visual which may explain while every now and then I need a blogging holiday!!!!

I thought readers may be interested in how the meeting of educators and midwives went on Koru Island in Second Life last night. I was a little early and having left myself on Koru Island, it was good to just logon and voila there I was in the middle of the group gathering for the meeting. I was pleased that I had came a little early as since my last sessions in Second Life, it is now possible to ’speak’ using microphones as opposed to just ’speak’ in text. I needed a little help from Arwenna to get this sorted (NB.. if running a meeting in Second Life either a) encourage people to come 24 hours earlier to check they can do everything they need to or b) write out instructions with screenshots to capture the key steps! It took me three attempts to get my voice to work, but finally I was organised, could take a seat (it didn’t have a good view and I didn’t know if I could move it or not!)… and ready to watch the action!

Dacary did a great job of welcoming everyone in.. and also checking track of who was present, or who was trying, ably supported by Arwenna and Isa. It was great to see Leroy there from polytechnic, along with Branwen and Sarah (whose avatar’s name escapes me just now).. Kind of felt more comfortable to know the real people behind the avatars. It was interesting to observe the people entering after me and their comfortableness or otherwise with the medium.. and of course to hear where people were coming from with some from as far afield as the UK (at least it was only morning for them), and the US (3am in the morning – now thats passion for you!).

I think the start was a little slower than Dacary had hoped for as it took nearly 15 or so minutes for people to arrive, find their voices, find their seats, and introduce themselves. Some people’s connection was obviously not great and so they popped in and out. Some of us (including me) were still teaching themselves how to talk and so kept turning on the mike accidentally which interrupted others (big hint – don’t use the shift key as the on/off switch if you also use this key when you type messages).. Dacary was eventually able to get underway with her presentation using a powerpoint type presentation on a large screen. This was clear, it was so lovely to hear a real voice talking through the key points (as opposed to having to read text).. and also to then follow the discussion that proceeded afterwards. As in any communication where you can’t see each other – there is always the silence after a question is asked as its still not possible to see if people are thinking, looking at each other to work out who is going to talk first etc!

One of the comments raised by one of the UK midwives (I think).. was that while it was good to talk about Second Life, it would be great to take a topic that was profession specific that would be the focus of the interactions to see how well then Second Life supported the interaction that might occur in a similar real face to face event. This seemed to me to be a great idea as most people appeared to have come along to get a feel for what Second Life may have to offer for them in midwifery research or education.

Anyway.. it as an interesting hour, gave me lots of ideas of what I could consider/plan/think about should I ever try to offer something like that for OT’s – how about it Karen – keen to have a try again?

Sorry – I have no photos – was too busy trying to keep notes of what was talked about for Carolyn, ensuring I didn’t keep hitting the shift key accidentally, and just soaking up the atmosphere to manage the camera as well! But I’m very impressed as Sarah has done a screencast of her impressions of the meeting, as well as including photos of the meeting – so go check it out – listen to it and watch the slides!

Having been very quiet in the last couple of months on my blog, it’s not surprising I’ve also not had much time to keep exploring in Second Life either! But that’s about to change again as I join a meeting tonight (2100 New Zealand Time) of midwives and educators. Two midwives at Otago Polytechnic who are very inspirational in their drive to master Web 2.0 tools are Sarah Stewart and Carolyn McIntosh. Carolyn has organised tonights meeting on Koru Island and has happily agreed to my attendance (given I’m not a midwife or midwifery academic!). It will be interesting to see how it goes as our professions are both very quiet in Second Life!

There are two exceptions to this though – one is the Thomas Jefferson University where the School of Occupational Therapy has used space on Second Life for a number of events include Backpack Awareness Week led by Dr Susan Toth-Cohen The other is Dr Fran Babich who has been actively exploring Second Life. I know that Karen has also dipped her toe into Second Life but left relatively quickly when confronted with rather ‘interesting’ people.

It seems to me that if we are to understand this ‘virtual world’ and to explore it’s possibilities then maybe occupational therapists need to do what Carolyn is doing – finding a place to meet that is safe, teleporting in the newbies to the ’safe space’ so that they aren’t confronted with some of the ‘interesting people’.. and then using this space to discuss/explore and consider the possibilities. If I think too few OT’s are using blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools… then there is even less of us (like 3 maybe).. who have a professional presence in Second Life (therefore not excluding those who have a personal presence separate to their professional roles!).

Will be interested to see what people think….. and I’ll be back with photos (if I can ever get the camera to pan properly) from tonight’s meeting. Oh.. check out here the photo of Carolyn and I as our personas (thats the top photo) Dacary Dumpling and Koru Bracken in Second Life.

I had a few moments last night and having been out of the blogging sphere for a month or so (is it truly that long – I’m surprised Karen hasn’t been after me!)…. Anyway, I checked out the Salford Occupational Therapy blog and came across Sarah’s reflections on what it was like to be a student in 1991. I had a wee giggle about her descriptions of her learning and how she managed about the internet and this sparked off my own reminiscing!

Like Sarah I still believe much of what I learned 26 years ago is still relevant today (I wonder how many other professions can say that?). I learnt about activity analysis, I learnt about assessment, I learnt the OT process, and I learnt to think about what it was I was doing and why! And yes I handwrote my assignments, but I don’t think there were as many words as Sarah’s!

Much of our learning came from our fieldworks – one full year of our three years was on fieldwork placements and some of us (not me).. were on fieldwork 3 weeks into our first term (semester) on the course! We worked with senior OT’s (well in those days anyone who had worked more than 5 years was considered to be so knowledgeable and so senior!)… and learnt much about the reasoning process (we didn’t know it was called that then).

We also learnt much from our tutors – as they provided us with the important knowledge deemed necessary for us to understand. Anne Cronin Mosey’s text on Three Frames of Reference for Mental Health (1970) had recently made it into New Zealand.. and we knew the tutors were about a chapter ahead of us in the text – but at least they were exposing us to this level of thinking!

So although Sarah wonders how she managed without the internet, email and computers.. I’m left wondering not only how did we manage with computers, but how we managed without a library etc etc. Oh.. we did have a library, but we never needed to go there and were certainly not directed to go there. In fact I can’t remember where it was in my first two years, the new building was opened only in our third year. We bought our OT texts – an English one in first year (McDonald).. and Willard and Spackman (5th ed)… along with Mosey’s texts (Three frames of Reference and Activities Therapy) and with a few medical/surgical texts, this is what we used!

I remember in my last year, last week going to the library and copying articles from the journals as I knew I probably wasn’t going to be able to access them ever again! (unless I lived in Wellington and even then – when I did in my third year as an OT.. it didn’t even cross my mind to go there and it was only two minutes along the road from me at one point!!!). I’m not sure if I ever read the journal articles I copied but I did keep them for a long time!

You may think I spent heaps on copying – but there were so few journals at that stage – or so few that we had access to… probably from memory it was the American Journal of Occupational Therapy and  the British Journal of Occupational Therapy and of course the New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy! The number of occupational therapy texts we could probably count on one hand. Developments in the profession were driven by the Americans, British and possibly the Canadians…

Do I think my learning was somewhat limited – I guess yes in that it was limited to what the tutors thought was important to tell us, show us or give us. We weren’t encouraged to read more widely, or even to source material more widely. We were encouraged to rote learn what it was we needed to know to pass the exams, or presentations.  In practice the supervisors showed us what we needed to know, and checked our understandings through what we did probably more than what we were able to explain.  Does this mean our qualification wasn’t great? I think not.. it prepared us very well for the world of practice that existed then… but the practice has changed and therefore the way in which learning is organised has changed. In addition, our means of communication has changed, and therefore the way we deliver learning also changes.  And this is not new – I think I only need to go back about 10 years before I trained, and occupational therapy was taught within a hospital setting!

And I also know the programme was good as a good many of the therapists I studied with are still in practice and these therapists often are excellent supervisors – their knowledge is sound, as is their ability to clearly articulate the OT process for student occupational therapists.

So thanks Sarah for the posting which took me back down to memory lane! Was it simpler – sure it was – the amount of knowledge appeared more finite, the settings we worked in more alike and less variable, there was strong OT teams and you came back to your nice safe OT dept whenever you felt threatening, and….patients were in hospital longer, therefore more rehabilitation happened under the guidance of other occupational therapists.  So yes I guess it was simpler!

On the second day of our residential school for the EdD (see my earlier posting), I had the opportunity to outline my initial thoughts about the topic I plan to investigate in the EdD. The first opportunity was during a class on quantitative research methods. The lecturer asked for some examples from the class – what were we thinking of doing, and then he went on to give examples of how a study framed by quantitative research methods might look. While the discussion was interesting, I realised that I need to be far more specific about the focus – which for me really needs to be about informal learning or unintentional learning and the creating of personal learning environments. Examples initially given in class were about me setting up for an example and online course, and then looking at the learning etc that occurs and other good ideas. However, the more the discussion headed down this track the more I realised that this isn’t what I want to look at (I did something like that in 1997/8 when I collected data for my masters thesis!).So.. at the end of the day, I sat with one of the staff of the programme and talked through again my ideas and this time I made sure I provided more of the background to my thinking and therefore where I might head. This person was able to understand what I was about which was a relief to me! So here it goes again – I’d be keen to see what others who stop to read this post think….. any feedback, resources or links gratefully welcomed!

My thoughts are…

we know that learning has occured when we see a change in behaviour

We continue to learn as we practice on a daily basis – some of this learning is formal, some informal, and some incidental or unintentional learning.

With increasing requirements learning has become more externally prescribed – ie HPCAA, performance appraisals and even audits against standards. The practitioner has less and less experience in defining learning needs, and determining how these needs can be met as learning becomes much more about the individual’s fitness to practice.

With external drivers such as I’ve outlined, formal learning becomes the focus for the practitioner, as with formal learning comes evidence of achievement. The practitioner has less experience in managing their learning, and in effect pays less and less attention to how it is they learn.

My thesis is that if we don’t pay attention to the ways in which we learn, we are less likely to be alert to or see alternatives for learning. We start to take what is offered even when it doesn’t fully meet our needs.

Other areas of movement – in some way linked…. a shift to lifelong learning, with an emphasis on being self-directed.

To engage in lifelong learning, we need to know what provides effective learning experiences for us, and we need to know what is possible for us.

So I’m interested in the intersections between professional development (specifically the informal, or unintentional learning that occurs), what tools are available to support this type of learning, and what this means for our profession (which is predominantly female, older, kinesthetic in learning style and probably other factors as well).

What I would like to do is work with a group of therapists (can be quite small) who are keen to look at learning how to manage their learning, keen to explore a range of tools that may support that process, and interested in describing for me how this type of learning compares with previous learning experiences. The group could be a group of academics, or could be a group of students, or a group of therapists who have the support of their senior manager to do this at work. Another group that would be great to work with would be a group similar to that proposed by Kielhofner and Forsyth (see for example this link)

This researchers are searching for mechanisms to close the theory-practice divide coining the phrase scholarship of practice… Working together therapists and academics created a community of practice. I wonder whether Web 2.0 tools could support the ongoing work of these communities of practice.

so if you’ve stayed with me until the end of this, please do get in contact with me – it doesn’t matter if you are in the northern hemisphere, as I will be on sabbatical next year and able to come to the other side of the world if need be!

Look forward to comments, thoughts, pointers etc.

Well its been a while since I made an entry here – the end of year activities certainly caught up with me. After a good break and several holidays out of Dunedin, I’m not back to work, back to study, and back to blogging!  For those readers who have popped back from time to time, I hope you are still popping back as this blog will continue to be updated regularly in 2008.  There will be heaps to talk about as I’ve finally taken the plunge and enrolled in a EdD (Doctor of Education) at the University of Otago.  Its a professional doctorate, and on Monday afternoon 16 people sat around a ‘U-shaped table’ for the beginning of the first residential school. The programme is designed for distance learners, although funnily enough many of the first cohort are Dunedin based. However, as some of us were discussing – the reason for taking it, is that even when the programme is based in your home-town, flexibility is desired.

I’ll describe more about the programme (as I understand it from a student perspective) in a later posting but for now.. here is the link to the site (just in case you are thinking about your goals for 2009…). One of the requirements is to produce a portfolio of the impact on practice… so I’ll start by blogging my thoughts here, as a basis for this portfolio.

So a new entry is about to be posted outlining my thoughts and an invitation – do read on!

I’ve been aware of the need for a long time to market our profession! My husband often tells me that we are really bad at this as a profession and I think he is right. Most people know what a nurse does, or a physio or a social worker, but when you say that you’re an OT you need to be prepared for the raised eyebrows, or the questioning look. Then depending on your audience you have to decide whether you take the long winded description, the philosophical discussion or the quick two minute – its a bit like physio, but I tend to work more functionally!

I know also that we have struggled to market our profession to incoming students. In our school we have made videos, we’ve created posters, and we have lots of stands at Career Expos…. but I’ve been thinking that actually blogs and photos and videos could be a great way to market our profession. And it doesn’t have to be complex! Karen Dobyns has a great example, and I’m impressed by her videoing skills. Now its just the everyday stuff they’re doing in class and she doesn’t always give long explanations but I actually don’t think she needs to. Her videos/comments/photos show days filled with interesting activities and they seem to do a lot of ‘doing’. I know that if I was thinking about doing OT, and I checked out her site I’d be tempted to look further to find out more about the profession because it looks interesting!  Well done Karen – so if you haven’t found your way to her site yet, then click on her name above and you will be taken directly there.

Jackie over at Occupational Therapy Otago has just set herself up with a cluster map which shows the location of visitors to her site. We were oohing and ahhing over who was looking at her site from India, both coasts of America and the north island of Aotearoa/New Zealand…

The results are certainly interesting – so I’ve followed suit and added in a cluster map as well – much better than my earlier Palatial Map kit (I’ve dumped that).. and will now excitedly be waiting to see where people are checking in from! You can easily pick up this tool by clicking on my cluster map which takes you to the Cluster map website – with easy instructions to follow..

Thats all from me tonight – I’m off to finish a report, and plan for an assessment that I have to do this week, plus think about what I should put in my application to enrol in PhD…there I’ve said it out in the wide wide world.. so I should stop procrastinating now and start the work towards getting into a programme!

I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to talk about next on my blog but nothing leaped to my mind. Anyway.. today was a day filled with my favourite things.

Firstly I started the day (after I checked polytech email, gmail – 2 accounts, and my blog)… with supervision with one of the fourth year OT students whose honours project I’m supervising. Its a great project and he really needs to write about it on his blog but just at the moment he is focusing on writing up his results so I won’t distract him! It’s great to see his ideas developing about the results. It’s always a struggle to think about how best to organise the results you’ve got but after some discussion and looking at some examples, he went away with more clarity. I do enjoy working with large groups of students and seeing them develop through to being therapists in practice… But it’s also neat to work with one person especially through a research process from the early ideas through to seeing the project plan, the gathering of data and now the ‘playing’ with the results.

After that it was on to meet with another of the lecturing staff who is picking up a new postgrad course. We met to talk about what the learning experiences are in the postgrad programme, what the postgrad office provides and what he needs to concentrate on. I was reminded that I need to put together a staff handbook for new staff as there are a number of things they need to think about, but other resources they don’t even have to worry about as our postgrad administrator provides such good support. I’m hoping for a good number of hons students and a couple of postgrad cert/dip students so that we can offer this course.

Then it was off to a planning meeting with one of the staff to discuss what she needed to gather for her performance appraisal. The first meeting is always a longer process as the person gathers together for the first time the student feedback, collegial feedback, and other evidence to show that they are achieving to the level of expected in their position. I wonder if students realise the multiple uses their feedback is put to, and how much we rely on it!

I’d just got back in the office when a friend from the other end of the country rang up to find out who she could talk to about the OT practice in the 80’s. I passed on a couple of names from the school who were involved in education at that time, and then we had a quick catchup…. I told her what I’d found recently in the two books I’ve been looking at on self-study, and noticing and how they had arrived at a good time. I’d put a workshop into the COT/BAOT conference titled “Where am I going – professionally competent or developing personally and professionally”. When I prepared the abstract I wasn’t really sure how I would organise the workshop, or even what I’d put together as the learning activities… and then I found these wonderful texts… I was telling my friend as I know she is planning a fantastic keynote for the next NZAOT Conference about caring for yourself.. and I was telling her how some of her ideas, and how some of the honours students findings from the data analysis had come together to help me put the ideas for the workshop together but I hadn’t been sure what the workshop was until I found these two texts! She laughed and reminded me that it was amazing what turns up just when you need it – just like these two texts. So with any luck the abstract will get accepted as I’ve now got some really good resources to shape the workshop.

That took me up to lunch, so after a quick catch up on emails, dealing with the ones I could quickly and putting aside those that need a bit more thinking I walked up to the bank to get some cash (two farewell presents this week – one from our school, one from another). The 15 minute walk to the bank allowed me to indulge in flights of fancy about the need for a book that focuses on strengthening the self – whether that be learning, supervision etc…. so maybe one day I’ll get from the thinking to the actual producing!

I walked up through the university (literally next door to us).. and then once I’d been to the bank back through the library (see photo of library). The library is fantastic at the University (I could live in it all day.. but then my first choice of career was a librarian – I just didn’t go there!). I decided to try and find John Mason’s text that I was talking about in a previous post but the library doesn’t hold it… so I moved onto looking for one on self-study that Margo Paterson has a chapter in. The text was out but I decided to go up and check another one anyway. University exams are finishing this week so the library is a lot emptier than when they started, but there are still quite a few students around studying. As I walked towards the shelves I could see some people with laptops open, working away on what I guess were assignments, others with their iPod stations all set up and plugged in, headphones on and course readers or workshop notes open and highlighted obviously trying to memorise the contents. Others places had no students, but they were obviously in the library but had left their desks for a few minutes – taken their laptop with them (the plugs are still lying on the desk) and there were lots of notes and pens – guess the laptop is more valuable than anything else there. I wondered what exams they were furiously memorising for and was left wondering are exams really the best way for students to demonstrate their learning. After all, they sit few if in any professional exams to demonstrate their knowledge once they leave the university – instead they go about showing they can do the job they are employed for?

Anyway.. I couldn’t find the self-study book I wanted, but I always love perusing the shelves, so I had a quick look around around where I was standing and picked up an amazing book by Sotto called ” When teaching becomes learning : a theory and practice of teaching”. I flicked through this second edition (2007)… it hadn’t been read so it always feels like a real adventure to open a book that hasn’t been pored over by thousands! the first section is on learning including chapters on motivation, Two accounts of learning, The learning process, Talking and feeling, Perception and so on. He then goes on to talk about teaching. It looks incredibly readable, so I plan to get some time in the next two weeks (the total loan period I get as a non Otago University member of staff) to dip in and out of the various sections and see what new ideas I find.

Realising I was going to be late for our management meeting I scooted through the university, and down past Fluid Espresso – our local cafe. I was going to stop to grab a coffee, but the queue was too long so I kept going! Tomorrow perhaps…..Whoever decided to put the cafe there must have realised they were going to be onto a gold mine – one block down from the university, just across the road from the polytechnic where I work, and also the College of Education – all those lecturers needing a coffee to get through the next meeting makes tracks to Fluid! I wonder if the owner stood on the corner of the street where the cafe now sits and ‘noticed’ all these people going backwards and forwards, and then imagined them with cups of coffee in their hands? Is that what led to their buying the space, applying for consent to open the shop, creating the space from what had originally been a bike repair shop!… and so on.

Management meeting was next – which is the HOS, the two programme managers and the school secretary. We took a few minutes to check out our action plans for the year for each programme – thank goodness I can check off most of mine as having been completed, and then the action plan that arose out of our last staff meeting/review. It sometimes feels like we have action plans coming out our ears, but at least we do know where to focus our energies and what we need to work on next. Wonder if students realise the background work that goes on to ensure the quality of the programme they are offered? We talked about a range of other ‘managementy’ type issues… and then I was on to my next meeting to go through and plan for another performance appraisal for another staff member. This person has been on staff a bit longer and I realised just how much more they had to bring to their appraisal than someone newer to the school.

Then… there was just time to get an email out to staff which advertises an upcoming seminar I’m hosting with Lynne Jaffe from Medical College of Georgia. We are aiming to start our programme out of Wintec (Waikato) next year and Lynne has experience of a programme being offered across to sites! So I’ve set up the meeting and to give staff an opportunity to practice using the online seminar software, I’m trying to get as many as possible logging on from their desktops! It will take a bit of time to set it up and get the equipment working well but hopefully will be worth it. Lynne will be able to sit at her desk about 5pm one evening next week and we will all be sitting at ours around 9am asking questions, seeking clarification, comparing experiences. I hope that the technology plays the game as its such a nice example of how technology can support us these days!

Then I was out the door to get to a school where I’ve been involved in a young childs transition back to school after experiencing a head injury. The child is doing well on just 1.5 hours every second day – so we talked about how they were doing, what was needed to be able to increase the child’s ability to tolerate longer at school. We also did some problem solving around why he seemed to so keen to go to school, but then when it came to it was so reluctant! Just as I enjoyed being in the library soaking up the atmosphere, I also enjoyed being in the school, actively working together with the teaching staff and parent to make the transition back to school for this child a successful experience.

Then back in the car, and after picking up a couple of things at the shops, I met up with a friend’s son who was packing up his room in the Halls after his last exam and is storing his stuff at our place. Four boxes later, the car was chocka to the gunnels but we made it home, had tea and he is now on his way to the airport!

Its been a busy day, not much time to stop and reflect on the events of the day… but when I fnished this entry tonight, I realised that everything I did today was a challenge as I looked to how I might find the ‘just right challenge’ to scaffold the individual’s learning.. considering what I ‘noticed’ and why (because I won’t know what I missed – if I did then I would have ‘noticed’). So everyday has learning experiences when you are an academic!

I’ve been meaning to post this up for a while – here is a blog created by one of our staff James – for the first year students.  Check it out..

http://participationinoccupation1.blogspot.com/