Thursday, January 23, 2014

Students Experiencing Difficulty

This week we'd like to highlight another section of the The Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative website.  They have a section entitled "Students Experiencing Difficulty". 

While we do hope that you would give us a shout if you find your student is struggling on placement (or even if you are wondering if you student is struggling on placement) we want to make sure that you have access to resources when the timing works for you.

The Queensland website provides some examples of common struggles, common reasons for those struggles and some strategies for managing concerns.

We would also invite you to check out some previous blog entries on working with students experiencing difficulty.  You can access them by clicking "The Struggling Student" in the Tip Library on the right hand side of this page or here.  Because our entries are sorted chronologically, scroll to the bottom to find the first entry. 


Take care,

Lisa and Ellen







Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Applying adult learning theory in fieldwork

We recently added The Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative website to the links section on the right. This week we invite you to check out their educator resource kit for ideas on how to apply Adult Learning Theory and Principles in fieldwork.

  
Happy educating, and give us a shout if we can be helpful.
 
 
 

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Have the student keep a reflective journal



Today's blog tip comes to us from one of our nominees to the 2013 Fieldwork Roster of Honour.  She wrote this when asked what tips she would pass on to other educators...

In my most recent placement I asked the student to send me weekly email reflections.  I didn't give any guidelines for length and the student could write them during unstructured/down time during the placement or at night if she thought about something after she went home at night.
The student and I had commented that it was a great opportunity for her to process what she learned and to showcase her clinical reasoning. I work in a busy environment that doesn't have a lot of "down time", so I thought this email dialogue would be a way to have more intentional focus on consolidation of info and an opportunity for a student to share her thoughts in a structured but informal way. This in turn gave me ideas of how the student was processing (above and beyond the debriefs that happen in moments throughout the day) and also where I should focus my energies in the weeks to come. 
Come evaluation time, I also had the 8 reflections to review....and reference the growth the student had undergone. I will do this in the future. 


For more information on using Journals, check out Section 4 of your red Fieldwork Site Handbook (which can be found on-line here).