Abstrait

Assessing the Effectiveness of Synchronous Online Training to Occupational Therapy Students in Teaching Hands- on Skills

Husny Amerih, Mohammad Yasser Hammad Jebril

This research was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of teaching Kinesiotaping to novice OT students through an online platform and to determine whether Kinesiotaping skills can be taught/learned and assessed without direct face-to-face interaction. Most literature relevant to this study was very scant, including reliability and valid Kinesiotaping competency evaluation, and most importantly there was a lack of concrete normative data for what constitutes acceptable “Kinesiotape skill level.” Because of lack of research in this area the researcher, and 8 OT students, developed Kinesiotaping Competency Evaluation based on best available practice guidelines. The researcher surveyed a pool of certified KT practitioners to establish the normative data for the time needed to complete a basic KT protocol and the acceptable level of competency when teaching basic KT protocol. Students were evaluated using two basic domains: Communication and Procedure. The Communication Domain consisted of an introduction, client confirmation, a brief explanation of the procedure, identification of any application precautions and/or contraindications, and obtaining client permission. The Procedure Domain consisted of skin preparation, tape preparation, the accuracy of kinesiotaping steps performed, and client education, and the time it took for students to perform the taping protocol. The overall mean performance score was 36 out of 39, ranging from 26 to 39. The time to complete the space correction task ranged from one minute 39 seconds to 15 minutes, with an average completion time of 6 minutes 4 seconds, compared to 1 minute, per strip of tape, the average time it takes a Kinesio tape expert to complete a basic protocol, according to a separate survey completed by the researcher. The mean for the communication subscore for video A was 10.14 out of 12. The lowest communication score was 0 out of 12 and the highest communication score was 12/12 (proficient communication). The mean for the skill subscore for video A was 25.86 out of 37. The lowest skill score was 22 out of 27 and the highest skill score was 27 out of 27.