iPads and OT Education

Occupational Therapy practitioners have been utilizing iPads in intervention strategies to address cognition, visual perception, motor coordination, handwriting, and other impairments.  The benefits of an iPad are especially useful for students with special needs for their ease of use, access to information, and convenience.  However, iPads are now changing higher education and interaction in the classroom.  Many universities and schools are using technology to replace traditional textbooks and utilizing other features of technology to enhance clinical education and clinical reasoning skills.

Husny Amerih, PhD, OTR, ATP, is assistant professor in the school of occupational therapy at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas.  He recently started using iPads in teaching his applied kinesiology class.  Previously, he taught the manual muscle testing (MMT) components of this class using the traditional approach of face-to-face interaction in classroom and lab settings.  However, to incorporate iPads, he created and uploaded five videos, each 7-10 minutes long, with subtitles detailing what muscle was being tested and at what position.  After his initial lecture and demonstration, students were paired up and given an iPad with videos.  The purpose was to allow students to practice multiple times, and check and verify their own skill using the videos as a reference before being checked by the instructor.  His role as instructor shifted from verifier of knowledge to a facilitator of learning.

At the end of the semester, Husny polled the 33 students in his applied kinesiology class regarding their preferred method of instruction.  Although only a small sample of students, the results concluded that most students still prefer their instructor’s hands-on teaching over the instruction provided using iPad videos.  For more information, read the full article from Advance magazine here.

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