Initiative Lead
Trinity College Dublin

Primary Contact
Dr. Yvonne Lynch
lynchyv@tcd.ie

€41,000

Student Success

Student speech-language therapists develop clinical and professional skills on placement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare settings were unable to offer placements, which meant students were at risk of not being able to graduate. Trinity responded to this challenge by turning to digital technologies as another way to develop clinical skills. Students learned through telehealth, simulation and virtual workshops and reported these tools enhanced their learning. This initiative will identify how best to integrate digital clinical learning with traditional face-to-face placement for an enhanced educational experience.

Students, educators and service users will come together in workshops to design a model that blends traditional placements with digitally delivered learning experiences while maintaining academic integrity. Working together, we will evaluate which clinical skills can be developed through digital methods and which require face-to-face learning. We will develop appropriate resources to optimise the digital clinical learning experience and identify how we can ensure student success.

Key deliverables:
• A blended practice education model with a roadmap linking digital learning directly to the national student assessment framework. This roadmap will signpost the most appropriate tool based on stage and target skills across all years of the undergraduate programme.
• A practical online toolkit with a suite of resources for each digital learning experience (telehealth, simulation, virtual clinical learning) and for each audience (students, educators). These resources can be accessed at particular points of the clinical journey depending on the learning objectives. Each suite will have self-paced interactive learning content and downloadable resources.