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The Opportunity: design an online continuing education course for occupational therapists using a constructivist framework; cite Illinois approval for correspondence/distance/online CEUs they allow 4 of 24 biennially, NBCOT requires 36 every 3 years ; find out information in general about distance based continuing education academic search premiere results UIC.

The Course: USING METAPHOR TO DESIGN THERAPEUTIC GROUPS OR THE FRAMEWORK: DOMAIN AND PRACTICE; focus on narrative reasoning and narrative theory--behavior change is motivated by anticipated changes in one's personal narrative; focus on design skills versus presenting group with an activity that may or may not be occupation-based; Discuss Illinois CEU requirements for OT/OTAs; how many modules? will there be a certificate for print out if the learner achieves a satisfactory performance level?

Course Introduction/Abstract

Knowledge and Skills

The learners

The Course Plan

The Rationale

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In order to maintain national accreditation by NBCOT and a state license, occupational therapists (OTs) and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs) must participate in regular professional continuing education. Doing so ensures that all occupational therapy practitioners are “staying current” and pursing ongoing educational experiences that add to their minimum entry-level skills. Many providers of continuing education opportunities to allied health professionals are beginning to offer a wide range of online learning opportunities. This “anytime-anyplace approach,” according to Wutoh et al. (2004), appears to be an effective alternative to in-person offerings. In fact, many states and licensing boards currently allow a percentage of continuing education credits to be achieved via modes of independent study and online delivery.

The course: WORKING WITH THE FRAMEWORK: DOMAIN AND PROCESS (WWFDP) is a learner-paced,open access, 3 module course which focuses primarily on applying a uniform professional terminology in practice. For accreditation purposes, this course was also designed in accordance with the AOTA approved provider guidelines set forth in The Reference Manual of the Official Documents of the AOTA, Inc. The content of the course specifically reflects the three categories of AOTA's codes for continuing education:Domain of OT, Occupational Therapy Process, and Professional Issues.

Introduction: This course presents OTs and OTAs with an opportunity to apply the terminology presented in the OTPF 2nd ed. Many initiatives are being implemented to increase practitioner fluency with the OTPF so that we can strengthen our professional image and present a consistent definition of occupational therapy services to external audiences. Because many practice models and evaluation forms inconsistently use the same terms, the OTPF now identifies a uniform "expanded" definition of terms commonly used in evaluating and documenting occupational therapy services.

Find out how to embed url in a wikispace page OTPF http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/download/pdf/OT_PracticeFrameworkDomainProcess.pdf

Learner: This course is designed for currently practicing occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants. It is meant to be self-paced and the medium allows for participants to return to the content as often as they like. Because AOTA adopted the 2nd edition of the Framework in 2008 and many departments have yet to integrate it into evaluations and documentation standards, it is likely that most learners will not be familiar with the many new ways of indexing and categorizing professional terminology.

Goal of course: Integrating the Framework into documentation (requires a shift from component-based, therapist-driven language/terminology to occupation-based, client-centered ways of reporting clinical findings; Become competent in the use of the OTPF to guide occupation-based practice; develop an occupational therapy evaluation that aligns with OTPF terminology; Initiate with a top-down evaluation approach to first gain information and an understanding about the client's occupational history, values, roles, interests, habits, needs, and experiences (i.e. the client's perspective of the occupations that he or she wanted or needed to perform to participate in life) prior to initiating a bottom-up approach to evaluation.

Knowledge and Skills: 1. The learner develops skills to successfully integrate the OTPF in documentation and evaluation. The learner is expected to : a) initiate clinical interactions with a top-down understanding of performance prior to initiating a bottom-up approach b)