Scope of Occupational Therapy postgraduate degrees around the world

Introduction: The production of knowledge in Occupational Therapy has been making progress worldwide.Objective: To understand how Occupational Therapy has developed as an academic discipline, particularly with respect to its areas of research at different universities.Methods: The Occupational Therapy postgraduate programs around the world (such as master’s degrees and doctoral programs), registered at World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) until 2015, were mapped and the websites of each program were visited to complete the information.Results: Data from 266 institutions that offered postgraduate programs were collected and analyzed. As of 2015, there were 348 programs in 11 countries; 225 professional master’s degrees, 69 academic master’s degrees, 30 post-professional doctorates in Occupational Therapy (PPOTD), and 24 academic doctorates (PhD). Such programs have existed since 1918 and had two major growth periods in 1940 and 1990.Conclusions: The number of postgraduate programs in occupational therapy is fairly limited. Only 16% of the countries that offer undergraduate courses also have master’s or doctoral programs. There are few postgraduate programs, especially at the doctoral level, which has limited the academic scope of this field.

An International Systematic Mapping Review of Educational Approaches and Teaching Methods in Occupational Therapy

Introduction:

Scholars have long examined educational approaches and teaching methods in occupational therapy, producing a wide range of educational scholarship. Yet the scope of the scholarship has not been systematically categorised and described, leaving the field without a baseline and guide for its educational science.

Method:

A systematic mapping review identified topics, research designs, levels of impact and themes across educational scholarship. Through comprehensive database searches and inclusion and exclusion coding, 129 articles published between 2000 and 2009 were studied. Data were collected using a data extraction tool modified from Best Evidence Medical Education, entered into Microsoft Access and analysed using queries.

Findings:

Conceptual/descriptive papers (n = 76) represented the primary form of inquiry. Research papers (n = 53) used qualitative designs slightly more than quantitative or mixed methods. Educational interventions (n = 22) targeted students' skills, knowledge, attitudes and perceptions, but not their behaviours, organisational change or impact on clients. Prominent themes included integrative learning, learning paradigm, complexities of practice, student reasoning and calls for reforming occupational therapy education.

Conclusion:

Priorities for educational research include deepen and diversify studies of local learning situations, develop profession-specific conceptual frameworks for learning and measure outcomes beyond student views of the learning activity.

Online learning: The potential for occupational therapy education

Online learning continues to have a significant impact on higher education. Increasingly students seek a combination of online learning and face-to-face instruction at undergraduate and graduate levels and occupational therapists ask for online continuing professional development opportunities. However, occupational therapy educators have been slow to adopt web-based instructional technology. This paper presents background information on the use of web-based learning in the general sphere of higher education and outlines the current range of usage in occupational therapy education. Research findings are presented to stimulate discussion regarding online learning and occupational therapy professional socialisation, student satisfaction and outcomes. There is a fine line between full and partial online course delivery, so research on technology-enhanced campus-based delivery is also included in the review. Evidence suggests that blending combinations of technologies with computer mediated learning enhances interaction and could address the higher order learning needs of professional programmes such as occupational therapy.

Brief or new: the benefits of on-line learning in occupational therapy

SUMMARY This paper discusses the benefits of incorporating an on-line program, such as Blackboard, into occupational therapy education to enhance the learning experience. An occupational therapy department at a midwestern university piloted the use of Blackboard in two classes in the spring semester of the junior year. Students (n = 16) ranging in age from 20-28 years participated in the pilot study, which lasted a period of 12 weeks. The students were given various assignments on Blackboard involving discussions, answering questions related to the lecture topic, and sharing evidence-based practice. Overall, the student perceptions of incorporating Blackboard into a traditional classroom were positive. Eighty-one percent of the students felt that Blackboard was easy to access, 75% felt that they could share thoughts and stories that they would not necessarily have shared in a classroom setting, and 81% felt that Blackboard expanded on lecture topics and relevant practice information. Data suggest that on-line learning can enhance the educational experience by building upon student fieldwork experiences, evidence-based practice, discussion of key concepts in the profession, and clinical reasoning.