Storytelling To Enhance Teaching And Learning: The Systematic Design, Development, And Testing Of Two Online Courses

The return to civilian life of more than 320,000 recently brain-wounded soldiers has overloaded and overtaxed the existing system of post-military medical care. The Veterans Administration has responded by developing specialized inpatient rehabilitation centers. The postacute care crucial to long-term adjustment has been consigned to newly-hired professionals and diverse civilian-sector clinics. These providers are generally inexperienced in long-term intervention and lack a competent theory to guide such intervention. The premier model developed by by experts in postacute rehabilitation of civilian TBI provides the logical starting point for the design of a centrally coordinated national system of care. This holistic cognitive rehabilitation paradigm, adapted for greater efficiency, can be disseminated to and administered by local personnel. The program features paraprofessional peer counseling, active family participation, modules of pre- prepared patient-family education, high intensity therapy for the dysexecutive syndrome, and direct training of generalization. Special adaptations of both the counseling and the cognitive training procedures address comorbid post- traumatic stress disorder. Finally, a number of technological enhancements of the basic therapy model are proposed and explained. © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved