Students on camp
Reviewed by Anna Volkmer

This article describes a three-day weekend camp for individuals with chronic aphasia and their care partners, designed to address personally relevant activities and conversations that help redevelop self-worth, confidence, and identity. The aim is to support carryover into individuals’ local communities. The camp is staffed by undergraduate students, providing experiences for the students in a non-traditional context. The aim was to examine the value of aphasia camp as a learning experience via the video reflections of 22 students. Each evening, students recorded individual video reflections following the broad prompt, “reflect on today’s experiences”. Sixty-two video reflections were recorded over three days. Videos were transcribed verbatim. Content analysis was conducted following both inductive and deductive approaches. Coding resulted in three main themes; 1. Applied learning 2. Service; and 3. Clinical experiences. The authors concluded that students perceive value in the experience and the video reflections were a useful method of capturing the students’ experiences. Opportunities for a range of student placements are often difficult to find, yet incredibly valuable in providing students with an insight to the real lives of people with communication difficulties.

Immersion learning at an aphasia camp: Analysing student video reflections.
Hoepner JK, Sather TW, Homolka T, Clark MB.
INT J SPEECH LANG PATHOL
2021;1-11. Online ahead of print.