Integrating Video Software for Clinical Role Plays
I. Project Overview
Graduate students in counseling psychology learn specific skills for counseling and therapy. Each set of skills build on one another and ultimately help the student therapist engage the client, explore their concerns, create insight, and move them towards action. This process involves the use of non-verbal skills, questions (i.e., reflections, questioning, summarizing, and paraphrasing), and use of tone, body language, etc. to convey interest, concern, and empathy. As such, the instructor for these skills must give feedback not only on the content, but as well on how the content is conveyed, the responses delivered, and the process of the therapy session.
For the past 4 years, I have taught the foundations course for beginning counselors in our Masters of Science program. This program consists of therapeutic role plays, where students pair up and take turns acting as the therapist and the other as client (having created a role play persona). Role plays follow a progressive process, the first interaction lasting 20 minutes and exploring the problem, followed by a 40–50-minute session aimed at insight, and a final 50-minute session working on action. These role plays take place beginning in the middle of the semester and then every two weeks. In the past, students were asked to transcribe their role plays, identify skills used, and discuss their intention using that skill as well as potential alternative skills used. Although a productive exercise, it limited the instructor’s feedback to a written assessment from the student’s perspective. Transcripts of the session can only offer a singular window into the therapeutic interaction, and are therefore restricting the feedback and not allowing for instruction on delivery, non-verbals, tone, or alternative interventions during the sessions.
To address this problem, the proposed project aimed to expand the current course assignment to offer greater integration of observation along with identification and critique of counseling microskills. As such, the present project included the use of the instructional tool YuJa. YuJa is a video recording and cloud-based software that integrates into existing LMS shells for student use and uploads. The software allows for video recording, annotation of section of video, and comments and feedback. Use of this software as adjunctive to the current course assignments serves to allow students to identify places in their video that demonstrate the use of therapy skills and allows the instructor to view identified segments of the video as well as expanding the viewing to the continued interaction. Observation through the use of video software allows the instructor to comment on the counselor trainee’s skill use across the domains: non-verbal skills, questions (i.e., reflections, questioning, summarizing, and paraphrasing), and use of tone, body language, etc. to convey interest, concern, and empathy.
II. Project Planning
Planning for this project broadly employed the technology integration framework, Triple E. This framework focuses on Enhancement, Engagement, and Extension of learning through the integration of technology. General questions for assessment of Triple E framework to technology application includes:
How well does the application (e.g., YuJa) transfer student learning to their everyday lives and the communities around them, and build on their prior knowledge?
How well does YuJa support the students' using higher cognitive thinking, make the learning easier to understand (scaffolds/supports in place), and add-value the learning goals?
How well does YuJa keep students' minds focused on the learning task, undistracted from peripheral elements and allow students to be active social learners around the learning goal?
Addressing these areas, the proposed use of YuJa for my course allows students to view their counseling session and recognize areas for improvement through modeling interactions in class and with observation of partners. Feedback then encourages extension of these skills into other course content and eventually external practice in clinical settings. Next, self-observation of sessions allows evaluation of skills from a multifaceted perspective – creating greater awareness of skills and skills enhancement – thereby enhancing student learning with the role play. Finally, rather than listening to audio recordings and transcribing text, students can view and describe their role play interactions, thus increasing engagement with the material and their learning.
III. Project Implementation
The pilot phase of this project was implemented in Fall of 2023 with a course of 20 graduate level psychology students. In order to assist students with using new technology arrangements were made for instruction on the access and use of YuJa for recording, transcription/annotation, and uploading to the course page. Students were instructed to record their sessions then annotate sections based on the instructions already established for the role plays.
Each student interaction consisted of a minimum of five identified skills with corresponding intention, evaluation, and alternative.
IV. Project Assessment
Although informal, results suggest the medium of the video software was successful in achieving the goal of enhancement and engagement with the role play. Students observation of their role plays enhanced their learning and allowed self-awareness in their mock-counseling sessions. For the instructor, it provided specific and observable data for feedback and instruction of counseling techniques. Although the application was generally useful, the interaction and useability of the software provided difficulties. Students struggled with the annotations. For example, the “comment” (as seen above), only allows a limited number of characters, thus restricting student comments unless they reply to their own comments. Next, the upload and storage of the videos was not consistent for all students, creating frustration and panic regarding completion of the assignment. Finally, the software did not always work as hoped. Instances of not recording audio or correctly orienting the camera limited the usefulness of YuJa as an accessible tool for these role plays.
V. Project Reflections and Next Steps
Given the shortcomings of technology accessibility, use of YuJa in future iterations of this course will need to address student interactions with the technology. Furthermore, the character limits with the comments created a problem for effectively identifying and critiquing skills. This course will be taught again in Fall 2024 and I plan to address these shortcomings by:
Offering a tutorial for use of the software and making sure students have correctly downloaded and granted permissions for the software (maybe starting with a trial run of a role play exercise not graded as part of the main three).
Maintaining the use of the previous transcription form used in the past and instead having students enter time stamps for the interaction they are describing in the separate document. Thus allowing full evaluation of their skills while maintaining full observation through recording.
Create formal feedback and evaluation of YuJa as a tool to enhance, engage, and extend student learning. Using student input will assist in improving the use of technology in the classroom and allow for modifications moving forward. Additionally, having assessment of the tool and how well it meets the learning objectives will allow for greater understanding of its utility in the classroom.