Testimonials
steven eberth, assistant professor, occupational therapy
October 2, 2017
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During Summer II, I had taught Administration in Occupational Therapy, a graduate course that is typically a dry subject regarding policies, practices, ethics, advocacy, reimbursement mechanisms, regulators and accreditors, marketing, and so much more. The two courses I attended, critical thinking and redesigning your course helped me rethink a couple of courses, but the administration class in particular. The course had weaved through it opportunities for application, but they were not connected together to create a seamless learning opportunity to promote macro and micro reflection.
Our program accreditor provides program objectives and each course has course objectives identified that pair with the accreditor standards. Working from that, the class was divided into project teams for the semester based, in part, on the practice settings they want to work in after graduation. I provided all of the teams, organizational details regarding functionality and staffing and kept it generic enough so it would apply to all of their settings. Early in the semester, each team needed to identify specifics regarding the regulations and accreditors that govern their setting. Each of their weekly assignments then related to solving some sort of issue related to the specifics of their settings with the organizational details provided earlier. At three points during the semester, they had to solve a complex organizational or personnel problem that required critical thinking.
The results were absolutely astonishing. I had never seen such thoughtful and detailed responses to the situations they needed to solve within the context of their simulated healthcare settings. In fact, I raved to the students and faculty in the OT Department about this and how their answers prompted conversations in the classroom regarding different points of view in the application of management concepts. Of course, it is also worth mentioning that my ICES response rate for the course was 100% and was well above the 4's with extensive positive comments.