Programs in
Assistive Technology Education
for End-Users in Europe

Name of the organisation
    BLOORVIEW MACMILLAN CENTRE
    ECC programme - Environment Controls Clinic
Address
    25 Buchan Court
    Willowdale, Ontario
    CANADA
    Telephone: +416 425 6220
    Fax: +416 494 9985
Key Person of the organisation
    Karen Morris, occupational therapist

This organisation is mainly a provider of health and social services, involved above all in rehabilitation and providing services. The training and educational activities (begun less than 5 years ago) at this special department are addressed to persons with disabilities, families, helpers or personal assistants and professionals. They also consider the importance of training for independent living or for coping better with disability, as well as the role of AT.

The educational activities carried out over the past 5 years can be classified as follows:

  • ca. 8 seminars, in the form of topical workshops addressed to a target of rehabilitation and education professionals and technologists;
  • ca. 15 information activities, represented by conferences and exhibitions addressed to the same target;
  • continuous activities addressed to the individual, represented by advice, peer counselling, and information services addressed to persons with disabilities, families, rehabilitation professionals, technologists and administrative officers.

AT plays a relevant or very important role in these initiatives, while the mostly carefully considered related areas include: household activities, self-care, standardisation and service delivery issues, general accessibility issues and communication.

TRAINING COURSES AND SEMINARS

The topical workshops described by this department of the Bloorview MacMillan Centre were generally held within large events: the first and second within two RESNA Conferences (1995, Vancouver; 1992, Toronto); the third within the Canadian Seating & Mobility Conference (1994, 1995); the fourth during the Course in Rehabilitation Technology organised by the University of Toronto (Dept. of OT) in the years 1992 and 1997. Due to the similarity of these initiatives in some of the considered aspects, only a general description has been annexed to the questionnaire.
Title of the initiative
Typology
Year
Duration

(in hrs.)
Number partic.
Target
Number teachers
Environmental control, enhancements to independent living top. work.
1995, 1992
8
75
rehab. prof., ed. prof., technol.
4
Ability Online Workshops top. work.
1992, 1997
1-2
6-12
pers. dis., fam., rehab. prof.
1
Environmental controls: a hands-on workshop top. work.
1995, 1994
1,5
50
rehab. prof., ed. prof.
2
Environmental controls technology & the service delivery process top. work.
1992, 1997
3
15
ed. prof.
2

Selection

As the workshops were announced on the leaflets edited by the conference organisers, it is not possible to define a specific target of participants. The workshop teachers were usually members of the Environmental Controls Clinic team.

Organisation

Activities took place at the conference venues, and the choice of workshop space entailed special attention to the seating arrangements for the participants. Some of these workshops were also organised as in-service presentation for the institutions themselves or for organisations of the same kind, and in this case no fee was paid to enrol in the workshop; however participants had to pay to participate in the conference as a whole. In this phase, co-ordination among the teachers is ensured by common lesson planning, as each of the teachers had a specific part to develop.

Implementation

Methods for content delivery were mainly lectures accompanied by intensive hands-on sessions, in the form of presentation/demonstration of products, individual use of products and experimentation of products on the basis of objectives given by the tutors. Lesson equipment played a vital role and comprised: overhead projection, slides, video, software for content presentation and handouts for participants, as well as case studies. The preferred pedagogical key-words, learning by doing and good presentation, were coherent throughout. Given the special location of the workshops, no information on participants was collected, while feedback was collected through a questionnaire.