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Purpose: This study explored the utility of online training as a platform for teaching early intervention speechlanguage pathologists to recognize potentially communicative, prelinguistic behaviors in young children with physical disabilities and complex communication needs.
Method: Using a randomized controlled trial, 45 early intervention speech-language pathologists were randomly assigned to one of three conditions within an online training: practice with implicit problem-solving (identification condition), practice with explicit problem-solving (reflection condition), or no practice (control condition). Knowledge about early communication, skill at recognizing prelinguistic behaviors, time taken to complete the training, and perceptions of the training experience were examined.
Results: Participants in the no-practice control condition took significantly less time to complete the training, achieved the same positive outcomes on the knowledge and skill assessments, and rated the training as appealing as compared with participants assigned to the more time-intensive identification and reflection practice conditions.
Conclusions: Results suggest the importance of considering efficiency and appeal when designing successful trainings for moving evidence into practice.
Integrating research evidence into clinical practice is a major challenge facing clinicians and researchers alike. The challenge for researchers is to design interventions that are both effective in promoting change (internally valid) and feasible to use in authentic practice settings (externally valid). The challenge for clinicians is to seek out, interpret, and apply the evidence to their own clinical caseloads. Research suggests that simply disseminating information about evidence-based protocols via traditional strategies, such as manuals or journal publications, may increase knowledge, but may not be sufficient to support new skill acquisition or to foster longer term behavior change (Beidas et al., 2011). Clinician training is required to accomplish these goals and, ultimately, support sustained use of evidence-based protocols in clinical practice (Fixsen et al., 2005). Given the demands placed on both clinicians' and researchers' time, training must be effective, efficient, and appealing. Online training may be one platform to accomplish these goals (Brown & Woods, 2012; Hamad et al., 2010; Kyzar et al., 2014). For clinicians, online training offers an opportunity to self-pace through materials at a convenient time and place (Cook et al., 2008; Dimeff et al., 2009). For researchers, online training offers an opportunity to reach a larger number of participants across a wider range of geographical areas, in a...