Culminating Capstone Project: Development of an Experiential Learning Framework for Graduate Occupational Therapy Students

The following capstone project was completed within an educational setting, consisting of education and program development focus areas. The objective was to construct a framework outlining standards and protocols required to implement an experiential learning program. The experiential learning framework would be adaptable to ensure efficacy among various intervention courses. Entry-level doctor of occupational therapy students at Nova Southeastern University were surveyed and identified a desire for experiential learning. Experiential learning for occupational therapy students improved evaluation skills, critical thinking, and inductive and deductive reasoning (Coker, 2009; Doucet & Seale, 2012). Furthermore, experiential learning for occupational therapy students improved student understanding of interprofessional relationships and roles, leaderships skills, and advocacy skills (Rogers et al., 2017). However, barriers to implementing experiential learning include poor university and local clinic partnerships (Knecht-Sabres, 2013), liability concerns (Doucet & Seale, 2012; Knecht-Sabres, 2013), inadequate client transportation services (Doucet & Seale, 2012: Knecht-Sabres, 2013), and overburdened faculty responsibilities (Knecht-Sabres, 2013; Rogers et al., 2017). An experiential learning framework was developed to incorporate benefits identified by the literature and methods to circumvent previously identified challenges were included