Building an Evidence-Based Learning Environment in SLP Education
Given the rigorous SLP curriculum, students must master an extensive list of advanced topics and complex concepts to obtain a first-time pass on the Praxis®exam. It doesn’t stop there: to be successful in their future practice, students must continuously build on that knowledge while developing critical thinking skills and lifelong learning habits.
One way SLP educators can drive these outcomes is by incorporating evidence-based learning in the classroom. Enhancing the curriculum with insights from the latest SLP resources helps prepare students for the complexities of real-life clinical practice. Start by identifying relevant material and discuss the information with students within didactics or in a clinical setting.
Let’s take this tutorial as an example:
Over the past four decades, over 20 different intervention approaches have been developed for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). Which is the best to use and under what circumstances?
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This tutorial compares conventional minimal pair, a frequently used SSD intervention, with two newer variants, namely maximal opposition and multiple oppositions. A general description (including the evidence base and critical elements) is provided for each, and hypothetical use cases are employed to illustrate how the approaches can be tailored to meet individual needs and speech-language pathologists’ expertise.
Students will learn:
- Which of the three approaches are best suited for different children with SSD
- How to plan appropriate interventions for each approach
Now that you’ve discussed the tutorial with students, how do you leverage it as a teaching tool for continued learning?
TrueLearn’s SLP Praxis® SmartBank: Bridging Theory to Practice
Leverage TrueLearn’s practice questions from our SmartBank containing 1,200+ Praxis®-style questions, high-quality rationales for all answer choices, customizable quizzing features, and an interactive dashboard that captures performance metrics data in real-time.
Choose relevant questions from the SmartBank and distribute them to students as assignments or integrate them into lectures. This approach bridges theory to practice, allowing students to reinforce their mastery of key concepts (via the tutorial) and assess their knowledge application (through answering TrueLearn’s practice questions). Additionally, students gain valuable exposure to board-style questions, similar to what they will face on exam day.
TrueLearn’s SLP Praxis® SmartBank is embedded with three learning science strategies—Retrieval Practice, Spaced Repetition, and Metacognition—that are proven to improve learning outcomes by elevating long-term retention, minimizing the impact of the “forgetting curve”, and decreasing exam day anxiety by simulating the testing experience.
In 2023, more than 74,000 learners used TrueLearn to help prepare for their exams and took over 80 million questions within our SmartBanks. The results? Learners improved their exam bank performance by an average of 19.7%.
Find out how other SLP programs are leveraging TrueLearn to empower faculty and students toward enhanced learning and Praxis® performance.
*Praxis® is a registered trademark of the Educational Testing Service (ETS). This content is not endorsed or approved by ETS.
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