OT's collaborating in IT : a team approach to improving learning and teaching using a staged implementation of technology

Staff development is often conducted away from the workplace and in a hit and miss way where academic staff are given a "dose of development" and then required to go back to their School or Faculty and be confident and comfortable in being able to enhance their learning and teaching activities with the new "medicine". Often these are "one off" sessions and upon returning to the workplace the academic feels isolated and swamped by the pressures of day-to-day activities. This paper describes a team approach at a university between the occupational therapy (OT) academic staff and an e-learning educational specialist whose role it was to provide ongoing support to academic staff for the gradual implementation of an institution wide initiative to improve basic standards of online environments. This specialist worked one day per week in the School in which the occupational therapy program was taught. The process of working side-by-side overtime sparked a willingness by the occupational therapy team to explore and trial other technological components that would engage their students. This paper highlights the collaborative process and staged implementation of this initiative, outlines key examples of e-learning initiatives trialled by the OT team, and presents the outcomes of the project as perceived by all parties.