Jane Seale

Older people and mobility in the home: in search of useful assistive technologies

A number of assistive technologies exist to help older people with their indoor mobility needs and there is an increasing recognition that older people are capable of being critical and active consumers of these technologies. This paper reports on a study that used focus groups and informal trials to explore older peoples perspectives on their indoor mobility problems, their ideas on what assistive technologies might resolve these problems and their evaluation of assistive technologies that were developed in response to these ideas. The analysis of the results from the four focus groups led to the development of a stair-climbing aid and a new cataloguing aid. The analysis of the results from the informal trials produced useful feedback on the design of the two products and indicated some limitations to the focus group methodology which could be addressed in future research.

Ethical Considerations in Therapy Research

Therapists are under increasing pressure to conduct research within their field of therapeutic practice in order to contribute to evidence-based practice. A perceived lack of therapy research has prompted a huge amount of literature on research methodologies. However, comparatively little has been written about how to ensure that these methodologies are ethically employed. Ensuring that a research project is ethical is a huge responsibility that cannot be taken lightly. This article highlights the ethical issues that a therapy researcher may need to consider and outlines the process and practicalities of how these issues may be addressed.

Fieldwork Educator Training: Design and Evaluation of an Educational Package

This article describes and evaluates an educational package consisting of five hypothetical case studies. The case studies were designed by the School of Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy, University of Southampton, and used during briefing sessions with fieldwork educators in order to introduce the fieldwork assessment form and discuss grading issues. A questionnaire survey of 70 fieldwork educators who had attended a briefing session and used the five hypothetical case studies revealed that, generally, the fieldwork educators found the briefing session, including the grading exercise with the case studies, useful. The fieldwork educators indicated a commitment to the principles of being reliable assessors but felt that certain areas needed more consideration, such as the implications of giving grades to real as opposed to hypothetical students. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to literature regarding assessment issues and fieldwork educator training.

Introducing New Learning Technologies into the Occupational Therapy Curriculum: Evaluation of a Hypermedia Teaching Package

There is a growing acceptance that information technology has a place in the occupational therapy curriculum. This has led to an increasing focus on the role of new learning technologies, such as hypermedia, in occupational therapy education. This paper describes a new hypermedia-based application called ‘Computer Applications in Therapy’ and reports the results of two case studies designed to assess its educational value and the potential influence that prior information technology experience might have on its use. A discussion of the results focuses on the three themes of self-directed learning, orientation and navigation, and skills and experience, and leads to three main conclusions. There is a need to explore the relationship between learning styles and use of learning technologies; develop and evaluate user-friendly interfaces and resource bases that have a strong sense of narrative; and cater for novices and experts.