Building an Evidence-Based Learning Environment in OT Education

OT students are required to master an extensive array of advanced topics and complex concepts to perform well in the classroom and on exams. It doesn’t stop there: to thrive in their future practice, students must continuously expand their knowledge, enhance critical thinking skills, and cultivate lifelong learning habits.

One effective approach for OT educators to foster these outcomes is by incorporating evidence-based learning in the classroom. This can be achieved by identifying pertinent research and engaging students in discussions about the findings, either during didactics or within a clinical setting.

Let’s take this research article as an example:

Extensor tendon injuries are a common occurrence and, if mishandled, can lead to long-term impairment for patients. Post-surgery, patients may have to deal with extensor tendon shortening, loss of flexion and extension resulting from adhesions, or weakened grip. The article provides an overview of the management of such injuries and discusses the following:

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The recommended treatment approach for the different extensor zones is as follows:

Read the article

Now that you’ve discussed this article with students, how do you turn the findings into a teaching and learning tool?

TrueLearn’s OT SmartBank: Bridging Theory to Practice

Leverage TrueLearn’s practice questions from our OT SmartBank comprised of 1,800+ practice questions, including the new scenario-based sets introduced to the OTR^® Exam in 2024, covering topics mapped to the NBCOT^® Exam Content Outline, written by certified occupational therapists.

Choose questions from the OT SmartBank that are relevant to the topic of discussion and distribute the questions as student assignments or integrate them into lectures. This approach bridges theory to practice, allowing students to reinforce their mastery of key concepts (via studying the review) and assess their knowledge application (through answering TrueLearn’s OT SmartBank practice questions). Additionally, students gain valuable exposure to board-style questions, similar to what they will face on exam day.

Additionally, TrueLearn is integrated with leading audio-visual mnemonics platform Picmonic to form a powerful learning loop that lets students learn and self-assess across the curriculum. Picmonic is embedded into TrueLearn’s rich answer explanations so students can immediately click through to the relevant material if they miss the question.

Together, TrueLearn and Picmonic have helped more than 1 million students improve exam performance and outcomes and empowered OT institutions to meet program objectives and key results. Find out how your program can benefit from our solution.

OTR^® is a trademark of the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT^®). This content is not endorsed or approved by NBCOT^®.