Need a project for your occupational therapy master's or doctoral degree?

I don't have time to do it all by myself - I wish I did. Some days the ideas come flying out of my brain so fast I don't know what to do with them.

Anyway, my idea of the day is for someone to complete a qualitative study of occupational therapy student's occupations.

What could make this interesting? Use Twitter. Bring Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's data collection methods into the 21st century!

So anyone who is interested can email me proposal ideas they are willing to share - I will create a network of interested people via discussion group, and we can establish recruitment and data parameters and create a really large dataset of daily occupational therapy student occupations.

It is a learning tool and a way for us to explore how to use technology for data collection. Maybe someday the model can be applied to other populations, but for now I have a working assumption that a fair number of OT students are Twittering.

Or if you are an educator and want to try this as a class project I am happy to share some ideas.

email me at chris@abctherapeutics.com

Fun!

Background reading:

Twitter.com

Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Larson, R. (1984). Being Adolescent. New York: Basic Books.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Chris, awesome idea! I'm glad to see new and cool tools like twitter being used. Best of luck on your project! btw AOTA is on twitter too http://twitter.com/AOTAInc
make sure to add us!
4:09 PM
willwade said…
chris saw this a while ago but only taken me till now to do this.. Its a really interesting idea. No idea how you would actually seperate the occupations out from the various tweets. Would take ages and may involve some thematic analysis. there are some tips though. Get students to do a d msg to a twitter bot. That way at least it would separate the wheat from the chaff! would be fairly simple to do. give me a shout if the idea has gone any further and you need a hand with the technicalities!
6:58 PM
Rashmi Bhatia said…
Hi,
I have an idea for my Masters and I need participation from fellow clinicians.

I am undertaking a project exploring benefits and application of Yoga for post stroke clients. There is lot of research supporting the benefits of applying Yoga for various disabilities but there seems to be lack of literature on how to adapt Yoga for post stroke clients. I wish to evoke a discussion on how yoga is being adapted and applied with stroke clients and with what therapeutic gains.



I invite your participation in the discussion about Yoga and stroke at my blogsite, http://strokeofyoga.blogspot.com/. What is likely to emerge out of this is a real-time, practice-based information on the topic. So, please come and share your experiences, ideas, and suggestions about the topic and join in an open & healthy discussion with other like-interest practitioners.



Please share any information along the lines of what type of Yoga is used, how often, how is it adapted, which specific Yogic concepts are used, and how long it takes before the results are seen.



I project to start summarizing the blog site activities by May 15th 2009.



I sincerely appreciate your time and consideration. Your contribution is indispensable to the success of this undertaking and for future growth of knowledge in this area.

Sincerely,
Rashmi Bhatia, OTR/L
12:13 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On retained primitive reflexes

Each year I receive several emails from colleagues about 'retained primitive reflexes.'  I am also seeing an increased number of reports from local 'health care' providers who are documenting these alleged problems so I thought I would write a summary of my opinion on this topic.   Predatory 'health care' providers including some OTs, PTs, chiropractors, and behavioral optometrists are creating a new 'market' for treating this alleged 'problem.'  Parents should be very wary of these practitioners and other professionals should challenge these practices whenever they are seen. The following is the kind of information that causes concern and was provided to me by a colleague as a sample from a student's IEP: The student continues to demonstrate the following retained primitive reflexes that at times interfere with his ability to demonstrate appropriate adaptive responses: Fear Paralysis Reflex, Moro Reflex, Palmer Reflex, Tonic Labyri...
Read more

Deconstructing the myth of clothing sensitivity as a 'sensory processing disorder'

Please note first that there is no formally recognized clinical designation of  'sensory processing disorder.'   It is a term constructed by occupational therapists that has not been formally recognized by the larger medical community. In our clinic we receive many referrals from local pediatricians when parents have concerns about children being overly sensitive to their clothing.  Most often the children referred are from four to seven years old and the families are severely disrupted by the children's behaviors and responses to clothing issues.  Commonly, children will have severely constricted tolerance for certain outfits, want to wear the same clothes repeatedly, complain that clothing is itchy/scratch/bumpy/wiggly/ouchie, and this all leads to disruption of daily dressing routines.  There is no doubt that the behavioral concerns are very real. The pediatricians tend to be appropriately conservative and provide families with good behavioral manage...
Read more

Occupational therapy education: How to navigate in a Perfect Storm

Image
Please click on and read all of the links - they include critical information that is required for this analysis.   A little over four years ago I stated that there are too many occupational therapy educational programs in New York State .  At the NYSOTA conference legislative information session in 2023 I stood up and suggested that we should all stop taking jobs at these institutions that were seeking to develop new programs.  I thought that if we did not take those jobs that the problem would be solved.  That was not realistic or correct, even if the intention was good. Well karma tends to strike when you make public pronouncements, so I thought I should expand on my perspectives on this topic. At current count there are still ~22 occupational therapy programs and ~11 occupational therapy assistant programs in NY.  Most of the programs are delivered at the master's level.  There are a very small number of entry level doctoral programs, but some of t...
Read more