AAC
Hands-on Lab

Task: How do you go from a lecture-based presentation where no one volunteers to try out the communication technology to one where everyone is exploring the equipment? Check out the video above to find out!

Tools Used: Canvas, Canva, Snagit, Screen recording software, YouTube, Emulators for communication device software, ADDIE

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Responsibilities: Instructional Designer, Content Research, Canvas Developer, Graphics, Video

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Challenge and Solution: 

A few times a year, I taught graduate speech language pathology students about high-tech communication devices. I used to do an hour long lecture and ask for volunteers. At most one or two would raise their hands. The rest were truly missing out! 

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Fall 2019, I started running it as a lab with index cards with instructions at stations around the room. Based on evaluation, the learning experience morphed into its present-day format, a course hosted in an LMS. My challenge was to design an alternative that allowed the students to independently “tinker” with the technology to experience how it worked.  Additionally, students needed realistic, scenario-based examples of how this technology could impact them in their future employment. 

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Pairs of students rotate through different devices and are given patient scenarios with related tasks to complete. They have to set everything up themselves following the instructions. I don't help. The first few stations you can watch them waiting for me to come over and guide them. Nope. By later stations, there is no fear and they are willing to try, mess up, and figure it out. Constructivism at work.

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Evaluation:
Kirkpatrick's Level 1 - pre/post straw poll on the students' comfort level with AAC.

Kirkpatrick's Level 2 - Graded discussion questions based on Bloom's taxonomy were built in to stimulate thinking about application for their potential patients and to ensure 100% task completion.

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Course updates were made based on professor and student feedback, as well as watching and talking with the students. 

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Feedback:

"The workshop that you did last year was fantastic.  I have eleven students this year in class and would love to see if you could do that workshop again?"

- O.H., Associate Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty