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What is the Doctoral Experiential (DEx)?
What is the Doctoral Experiential (DEx)?
The purpose of the Doctoral Experiential (DEx) Capstone is for students to apply the knowledge and skills gained during their OTD academic courses and Level I and II fieldwork experiences in ways that challenge and perhaps transform the delivery of health, educational, and social services. Through designing and implementing a community experiential and a scholarly project that specifically responds to the needs of a population and setting, students experience the roles of reflective practitioner, transformative leader, and innovative designer. The DEx Capstone includes a complex interrelated field experience and a scholarly project that is coordinated by a student, university, and community team. (WNEU, 2022)
DEx Manual
2022 WNE OTD DEx Capstone Student Manual.FINAL.pdfComponents of DEx
Components of DEx
The WNE OTD Doctoral Experiential Capstone is designed to assess and serve the needs of the population and setting of a community partner organization such as a hospital, clinic, school, health care, social service, advocacy, or educational organization. It has two components. One is a community experiential, and the other is a scholarly project. Both take place during a 14 week (560 hour) DEx Capstone placement at that community organization. Initially, using a service learning and consultation approach, students spend their time learning about the population and setting and the organization’s strengths and challenges. They also participate in the daily activities of the organization as needed. At this time, the DEx Capstone team (student, faculty, site, and peer mentors) focuses on updating the preliminary needs assessment and literature review, incorporating any new information into the DEx Capstone proposal/plan. Then, specific projects and activities, targeted at the identified needs, are designed and implemented. For example, in a DEx Capstone 2020 project, aimed at assisting a hospital with falls prevention research and service, the DEx Capstone team identified a need to update teaching materials. In response, they incorporated their knowledge about falls prevention, media and instructional design, occupational therapy, and cultural humility into a significant revision of the program’s falls prevention PowerPoint presentation and patient education materials. This work was scholarly in and of itself, representing Boyer’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Boyer’s Scholarship of Integration. However, they further investigated the success of their revised program by pilot testing it on a small audience, with good results. This illustrates how the specific roles and responsibilities of the OTD student evolve during the community experiential and the scholarly project and that they are determined via an ongoing collaborative planning process and documented in a continually evolving DEx Proposal/Plan.
Appropriate supervision and mentorship are built into the planning and implementation processes. As OTD students will not have completed their OTD professional educational program by the time they begin the community experiential and the scholarly project, they are not yet able to practice occupational therapy independently. All student plans and activities must be within the limits of the practice act for their state. The DEx Capstone can occur in a setting where there is no OT, and the site mentor/consultant can be someone qualified in another field. This is encouraged because these opportunities are believed to facilitate the practice of interprofessional collaboration, provide insight into the needs of different populations and settings, and allow exploration of the potential role and contributions of OT in new areas.
Through experiential education, students are expected to learn about themselves and their community, imagine and innovate in response to identified need, understand organizational development and function, and apply the skills and knowledge gained in the academic and fieldwork components.
(WNEU, 2022)
Phases of the DEx
Phases of the DEx
(WNEU, 2022)
The preparatory phase occurs first, beginning in the second semester of the first year of the OTD program. It is synchronous with academic and Level I fieldwork courses. In this phase, students learn foundational research and evidence-based practice strategies to complete the Doctoral Experiential Capstone. They learn how to conduct a needs assessment and develop both a scholarly project proposal and a community experiential project plan. At the culmination of that phase, they present a written DEx Capstone Proposal, including a work plan with delineation of responsibilities and timelines for project completion, to a faculty panel for review and approval. A format for this proposal and detailed instructions are provided by the WNE OTD program. The proposal includes:
For the scholarly project: Plans for ongoing review of the literature, a clearly stated preliminary research question, a methodology for answering that question, and planned strategies for data collection and analysis.
For the community experiential: A detailed outline of planned activities which include a formal needs assessment as well as daily participation - working with and learning about the population and services of their partner organization.
The experiential phase may occur in sequence, or simultaneously, depending on the design of the DEx Capstone. Although there is often preparation in advance the focus of the DEx Capstone implementation activities includes both experiential and scholarship.
The scholarship phase may occur in a sequence or simultaneously with the experiential phase.
The dissemination phase follows the completion of the doctoral community experiential and scholarly project and involves presentation(s) to a faculty panel, the WNE community, and the site organization. (WNEU, 2022)
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