| PATSy Lecturer and Postgraduate Group Report |
| Home | Speech & Language | Neuropsychology | Medical Rehabilitation | Dyslexia | Audiology |
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Summary of responses from PATSy focus group evaluation with
visiting Speech and Language Therapy lecturers and
postgraduates
Organiser: Carmel Lum Everyone at this workshop explored PATSy and HyperNews. The overall impression suggested the participants were very positive and regarded PATSy as a genuinely useful education resource. None of the participants reported major difficulties in using PATSy and everyone seemed to have a keen sense of how PATSy would slot into their existing courses or curriculum. The mood of the workshop and the suggestions offered by the participants were very encouraging. Some did express reservations regarding access and technical support but no one suggested these would be insurmountable General points noted during PATSy trial by individual users Norms: Some tests have norms some do not. Norms needed for all tests on PATSy Project team's comments: Norms are not provided for all the tests on PATSy for two different reasons. Sometimes norms are simply not available for the test (e.g. some subtests of Palpa) but often, norms are absent to respect publishers' wishes that PATSy be presented in a way which still requires the user to consult the paper-based test manual. PATSy is a resource designed to be used in conjunction other learning materials and resources. This will also help situate student learning within the real world. The decision for determining which tests are provided with norms on PATSy is as follows.
Norms provided When the test is out of print (& with permission) (e.g ADA) When the test is an experimental task and is not in the public domain (with permission) (e.g. Maximal pairs, Howard & Franklin test) When only total test scores of a restricted test are reported (e.g. Raven matrices, STM tasks) When the published test does not include norms & other sources must be cited for norms (e.g some PALPA subtests)
Norms not provided When the items of a published test are presented in full (e.g. WAB, some PALPA subtests) Log: Two users said they found that the log panel re-appeared even though they had de-selected it. Project team's comments: Remediated now Tutorial questions: Some cases do not have tutorial questions
Project team's comment: These have not been installed yet. Some are undergoing editorial revision. Researcher mode: This needs links to item-by-item information.
Project team's comments: This is currently possible. Researcher mode offers second highest top-level access. User probably missed it Video: This needs to be longer if the type of patient changes e.g. fluency patients.
Project team's comments: Longer videos can be provided to show other types of disorders (as suggested for dysfluency). A general principle about videos is that they are used if their inclusion help 'tell the story' about the patient. Most videos are a 2 min. sequence. This is often sufficient to give 'a flavour' of how the communication impairment presents in the person. As a single video clip however, these will take quite a long time to upload onto screen currently. With future improvements in technology, it will be possible to access longer video clips more efficiently. The technological inefficiencies are related to bandwidth issues and speed of user's connections. So, there is a trade off between duration and size of video. Pictures: The pictures need to be smaller and then the buttons beneath them will be visible e.g. TROG. Another suggestion was to put the buttons on the side.
Project team's comments: We will resize these pictures to fit 15 in screen monitors at standard screen resolution.
Group discussion The group presented their views on access and made suggestions for how PATSy might be improved.
Access & technical issues: Some people felt they were able to start using PATSy after the summer, others thought they required more IT support to ensure students were guaranteed access to computers. Most appeared to think PATSy could be a stimulus for changes in those IT units. Someone anticipated location of access could be constrained by patient video.
Project team's comments: QMUC' s experience shows that each of 41 students can be given access to PATSy 2 hours a week with 6 computers. This amounts to booking 6 computers for 14 hours per week. The students involved in the pilot however, had only 13 hours out-of-class-time during 9-5 and this was the most constraining factor. So, access could be further assisted if students are given out-of-hours access to computers. A video de-selection option will be available for those users and students who wish to access PATSy from outside their education organisations.
PATSy is designed to be platform independent. This means it will run on Unix machines, Macintosh and PC computers. It is also designed to be on the 'low-end' of technology so that most basic computer configurations prevalent in most education institutions will be able to access PATSy. The computer specifications for PATSy are described on the front page under the URL http://www.patsy.ac.uk/
In addition, PC users (but not Mac users) will need to ensure they have sound cards 16-bit (cost approx. £20.00) in their computers. Reasonably good headphones (e.g. Sennheiser's) can be purchased for £14.00 a set.
Clinical Hours: Several of the group thought that the time students spent on PATSy would qualify as counting towards their clinical education hours. This was predicated on the fact that students currently are allowed to count clinic-related activities (such as special workshops and seminars) towards their clinical training.
Project team's comments: Pleased to hear PATSy might have this role within clinical education
Research: It was queried how PATSy might be used in research.
Project team's comments: PATSy is designed to serve as resource, which
dovetails research into education. This is partly to ensure that the data
describing the different patient cases is of a high quality and will be trusted
by researchers wishing to conduct research. PATSy's contribution to research
can be thought in terms of:-
By re-using research patient data in this way, it helps maximise the data collection efforts of researchers and the contributions by research patients. In some situations, it could provide an alternative to studying a 'live-patient'.
Further features suggested for PATSy by the group Many good ideas were suggested and they are listed here for further reflection.
Measure ruler for the video: This was suggested as a device to help users report the location of where they had heard a part of speech on the video.
Project team's comments: This can be implemented
Play-back of speech for speech analysis: One proposal was for speech to be play-back and viewed as a sound wave to allow further speech analysis.
Project team's comments: We are looking into this.
Calculator: Another idea was for PATSy to have a calculator to allow students to perform arithmetic on treatment data.
Project team's comments: PATSy is not currently numerate. What about using other resources in conjunction with PATSy?(e.g. Excel which has basic statistical functions)
Common lists of tests: It was thought that students might become wise to the source of the patient's communication impairments from observing which tests were used with the patient.
Project team's comments: This can be implemented but to date most students do not seem to know the tests (aphasia tests) well enough to be able to take advantage of this feature. There are patients on PATSY presently who have received exactly the same tests though their difficulties vary (e.g. NH, BK, DB and JW). PATSy's orientation is largely for teaching and this insightful suggestion is most valid when choosing patients and tests for "Exam mode" access.
Cinderella transcription: One suggestion was to provide Cinderella in transcribed form.
Project team's comments: Cinderella is un-transcribed primarily because we wish to minimise the problems of inter and intra-transcriber unreliability. There are many other transcribed sections and the Cinderella task is left to the user's own analysis.
Howard & Franklin test: It was asked whether the errors could be shown for each item.
Project team's comments: Information about errors is available in the item-by-item description of the patient's performance.
Other types of disorders: Participants suggested including progressive disorders and treatment data as possibilities. Nick Miller was suggested for motor speech disorders.
Project team's comments: There are plans to extend the range of impairments presented on PATSy'. The most expensive part of adding new cases is when a new template of tests is being created for a new type of disorder. This is best supported during the funding phase. Participants keen to extend PATSy into different disorders are advised to raise this possibility with the project team before June when the project finishes. Nick Miller has been approached.
HyperNews: It was suggested that HyperNews be available to this group as a post-workshop forum for exchanging ideas about PATSy and for keeping in touch with PATSy developments.
Project team's comments: Hypernews is probably most useful when the commentators are actually using PATSy i.e. subscribers where there is something to talk about related to PATSy. In the interim, a list has been set up for PATSy workshop participants to allow communication among the group regarding PATSy. The e-mail address is workshop@patsy.ac.uk
General Comments The PATSy project team is very pleased to learn that the participants of this workshop have endorsed PATSy as a valuable clinical education resource. We thank everyone for his or her time and valuable suggestions. We propose the following in response to the outcome of this workshop.
Further information An information pack detailing PATSy and subscription costs will be made available around May-June 1999.
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