Program Mission, Vision, and Philosophy

The Occupational Therapy program at the University of Minnesota believes that students are active participants in their own learning and this best occurs when faculty design role-relevant, purposeful learning opportunities coupled with inherent performance feedback. We believe that students learn best when faculty design learning activities based on the following principles:

Hybrid Education
Hybrid education is the systematic blending of online and on-ground learning activities. On-ground learning occurs in settings where students are physically present for the learning activity, e.g., laboratory, experiential environment, and face to face classroom discussions. Each online and on-ground activity is designed to achieve clearly specified learning outcomes. Thus, hybrid teaching and learning facilitates opportunities for students to actively engage in their learning and provides the strongest professional education. Online or on-ground learning activities are selected by faculty to best achieve desired learning outcomes. Faculty engineer these learning activities using web-based technology balanced with active face-to-face experiential activities to develop the occupations or skills of practice.

Experiential Learning
The Program’s experiential learning model is predicated on the belief that increasingly real world contexts best facilitate student learning. Learners practice increasingly complex skills in settings ranging from low-realism situations in classrooms and laboratories to high verisimilitude ‘real-life’ simulations of practice settings, to real-life contexts. Faculty members adapt the complexity of the skill to be learned and/or alter the setting’s congruence to real world practice to promote adaptive learning.

Reflective Learning
By critically reflecting and being anchored in their own life experience, students change their patterns of thinking, feeling, believing, and in doing so, therapeutically link themselves to their therapeutic work. By critically reflecting on self and own-group and sharing these reflections with their peers and others, students build the skills to question assumptions and to examine alternative ways of being and doing. This ‘thinking about your own thinking’ draws from metacognitive learning strategies that guide how students assess their own understanding or performance.

Self-Determined Learning
Self-determined learning occurs as students select learning options and apply new concepts to relevant contexts at home, in the classroom, and in practice settings. Students increase flexibility when adapting to environmental changes while molding responses through practice. Faculty members design learning experiences that focus on ‘how to learn’ rather than exclusively delivering content about “what to do”.

Social Learning
Social learning is the final critical component of the Program’s hybrid learning curriculum, countering the individualized learning that often can dominate a solitary online format. Students learn together and from faculty via their on-ground experiences through observation, imitation and modeling and by interactions with occupational therapy and inter-professional faculty with known expertise and knowledge of practice. The Program offers opportunities for students to practice in the presence of experts, receive corrective feedback in real time, and discuss how to change, grow, and master professionalism.