Professor Encourages Blogging, Virtual Interaction in Graduate Speech Language Pathology Program

The University of Cincinnati's graduate program in speech language pathology may be a distance learning program, but Aimee Dietz creates a community for her students to thrive in. This is done through facilitating student interaction through various group projects and other activities.

“If you get students engaged, they understand information at a deeper level,” said Dietz, an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders. “The more they interact with each other, they begin to learn information in a way they can apply it after graduation.”

The most innovative project in Dietz’s courses is the Research Tuesday blog. On the second Tuesday of each month, speech therapists write blogs about recent research that applies to their therapy practice.  Students take turns writing a blog entry each week, where other students can read and start a discussion based on the entry. Reading and writing blogs allows students to learn to analyze and communicate about research with a medium they are already familiar with.

Students also participate in an Intervention Presentation, a group presentation on an evidence-based intervention. Groups are required to present a research article that documents the effectiveness of a treatment approach. The presentations are uploaded to Blackboard, where other students have the chance to discuss the topic presented. 

The Intervention Presentation serves to teach students how to educate others on the best practices in speech language pathology. SLPs are required to educate new medical staff on communication strategies and to demystify myths associated with certain communication disorders, so Dietz designs her courses so that students gain the skills to provide state-of-the-art services to the patients they serve and ensure that their colleagues will be able to do the same. 

Dietz found that students’ performance on the final exam improved, and students noted that they got lots of hands-on experience and built up tools they can use for their careers as speech language pathologists (SLPs). There was also a decrease in the number of email inquiries and Discussion Board posts from students who were confused about the assignments after she created Kaltura videos detailing syllabus and course assignments. 

Technology is a matter of keeping up with how students receive and understand information, she says. The key to achieving success with technology in learning is seeing successful applications of various tools. 

“Use of the available tools will increase and ideas for novel applications will develop once faculty see that a real faculty member, who also has major service and research commitments, can implement the technology and increase student learning and engagement via mediums that today’s students are accustomed to using,” Dietz said.