What types of people do well with online education? Have you ever wondered if you would be successful as an online learner? What about OTs in general? We are usually people-oriented and count on face-to-face interaction to help us make sense of information. We’re trained to identify and use nonverbal information, and we tend to not be so ‘techy.” So how could online learning work for us? And which manner of interaction do we prefer? Which communication style is the better fit: synchronous (simultaneous, such as being online together in a chat room) or time-delayed (asynchronous, such as interacting with posted material at our leisure)?

There are ways to evaluate if you’re a good match for getting professional development units, continuing education courses, or even an advanced degree through online learning programs. First, exploring the fit between the typical “OT learner” and e-learning can help you decide if you’re a good candidate for online education. Another way to determine if online learning is a good fit for you involves using the Myers-Briggs Inventory to compare and contrast temperamental characteristics of OTs in general related to e-learning and learner outcomes in specific. Consider these two OTs:

Natalie’s Dilemma

Natalie’s interest in thoroughness, details, justice, practical procedures, and smooth flow of both personnel and materials has led her to a career in occupational therapy. She has practiced for 12 years in acute rehab and has recently decided to return to school for her master’s degree. She doesn’t like risky prospects and wants to make sure she finds the “right school” for her advanced degree: She wants an affordable, accredited school that will provide her with a strong education. However, attending classes in a full-time program isn’t reasonable, considering her responsibilities to her work, her family, and her 3-year-old.

She’s not afraid of the course work; she has a knack for making sense of difficult problems. Her last few years as a supervisor have taught her a lot about business. She is the type who anticipates what materials will be necessary in advance, and she makes sure they’re in the right place at the right time. While she has been accused of being invulnerable, she’s actually very sensitive to criticism, and she’s worried about taking on more than she can handle.

She has friends who have taken online courses, but she’s not sure an online master’s degree would work for her. She prefers to know who she’s dealing with and isn’t sure how she’d do that without face-to-face interactions with her instructors. Natalie has decided to make a grid to evaluate four programs she has identified as potentially meeting her needs. She is considering cost, travel, accreditation status, flexible scheduling, and the quality of faculty.

Wendy’s Worries

Wendy has an unusual type of charisma, and people follow her whether she’s aware of it or not. Realizing this, however, has led her to feel guilty because she sometimes leads others to places it is, perhaps, best not to go. She has recently decided to return to school for her doctorate and is seriously considering one of the online OTD programs. She wants to remain in clinical practice and isn’t as interested in research as she is in clinical excellence. She believes it is important to cooperate with others and wants to build better collaboration between the various disciplines within school-based practice. She has a strong reputation as a harmonizer, and other people turn to her to be nurtured and supported. She can usually deliver; but lately, those kinds of demands have become overwhelming, and she feels increasingly less confident that she is guiding others in best practice methods.

She has always loved school and found it easy. She likes to learn but sometimes finds her instructors disappointing. Wendy’s friends say no one can live up to her ideals. Really, she’s pretty tolerant of others; she is mostly hard on herself.

Wendy thinks an online program would be great, except she can’t imagine not going out for coffee with her classmates and studying together and getting to know their ideas and interests. She thinks online learning would be better if there was a way for her to interact with her classmates, too. Nevertheless, she’s thinking the good things about online programs might outweigh the bad. While she’s optimistic, she’s still concerned that she’ll get into an online program and feel like she’s made a big mistake.

Wendy begins to evaluate five programs by talking with friends and calling the programs and asking to speak with a counselor there. She wants to get a feel for the school’s personality, learn about what the faculty values, see how responsive they are, and learn how they address her concerns about missing the face-to-face learning opportunities. She’s also interested in whether or not she can take one class to test the waters before starting the program.

Learning About Your Online Options

Understanding the elements of successful learning via online education with more clarity could make online learning an accessible option for students who currently dismiss it as an educational option. The most frequent reason given for dismissing online education options is the perception that there is a lack of interaction available. A close second reason is the feeling that meaningful learning must take place in a face-to-face style classroom.¹

You may find it surprising to know that 20% of all higher education students in America were taking at least one online course in fall 2006.¹ This staggering trend has prompted educational researchers to assess the quality of learning and the learning outcomes in online education² and explore what type of learner might find online or e-learning ideal. Researchers studied the type of interaction, the design of instruction, the way a learner interfaces with e-learning activities, and the environment in which a learner opts to learn.³ They identified that these variables, along with hallmark attributes of the learner, were key elements to consider when designing and evaluating online learning programs. Specific learner attributes, mainly their attitudes and habits, were found to interact with the way programs are designed to ensure or impede student success. Beyond learning profiles, researchers have begun to identify that students who communicate frequently with their instructors and other students are substantially more successful in online learning environments.^2,4,5 The research also suggests online learning is most suitable for independent learners who value convenience and flexibility when scheduling their classes.⁶

But does this apply to OTs? Could OTs enjoy the benefits of online learning? Are computers and the e-learning environment a good fit for them? Most would say no. In general, OTs think they need to see, hear, and feel instruction; to engage in lessons; and that they are too hands on for e-learning to work for them. The profession values therapeutic relationships, cultivates the subjective rapport established in face-to-face encounters, and capitalizes on a multitude of nonverbal communication — brow furrow, long pauses, poor proximity, the cognitive cues derived from smooth pursuit of multi-stepped tasks. In the occupational therapy community, these perceptions serve as a barrier to online education.

Perhaps understanding the type of learners that OTs tend to be can help those considering online education decide whether or not it will meet their needs or help justify OTs’ preference for brick and mortar classrooms. Are OTs and occupational therapy students unique learners

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: A Review

The purpose of the Myer’s Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is to understand and predict a person’s unique preferences and approaches to learning and interacting with the world.⁷ The MBTI reports people's preferred ways of behaving on four dichotomies, each consisting of two opposite poles, and creates four polarities and 16 temperaments. These temperaments express preferences for the way individuals prefer to accomplish their daily occupations and the mental energy it takes to perform thinking and doing tasks, much like writing with the preferred or non-dominant hand. While one way feels more natural and comfortable and the task at hand is easy, the other feels awkward and cumbersome. Behavior preferences are analogous: one approach has ease and the other is a poor fit resulting in lack of smooth pursuit to complete even the simplest tasks. The MBTI places learning styles into 16 distinct designations of learning profiles that can then be used to predict differences in how individuals take in information and come to conclusions about that information. (See Table 1.) You can start learning about your Myers-Briggs personality at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp.

The MBTI was based on Jungian psychological principles. Carl Jung⁸ believed the human psyche lived in the inner landscape; to understand yourself, he thought one had to go within. He thought that from that vantage point, one can learn of the world through the lens of his or her own human heart. According to Jung,⁸ only by this framework can we heal the human soul. Jung studied under Freud. And while Freudian psychology sought to make the unconscious conscious, Jung took this background of analysis to guide the exploration of the inner space of personality. However, the belief that we can best explore the world if we first know our own heart and our own inner space led to the development of many programs that type personality. These tools are actively used in self-help guides and for career and relationship counseling.⁷

To summarize and simplify Jung’s theory, withdrawing from crowds and groups restores introverts, while being in the company of others energizes extroverts. Those who are primarily sensors perceive information directly from the physical, tangible data in the world; those who are intuitive rely more heavily on the perceptions of the world they derive from within — from intuition or imagination. Those who are thinkers process information through logic, while feelers come to their decision based on an internal emotional response. Finally, the last criterion explains how you apply information. If you are a judging sort, you make plans and organize your life according to those plans. Perceivers prefer to act as they are moved to act, to be free to wing it, and to improvise and be whimsical if they are so moved.

The MBTI can be a valuable tool with which to construct a profile of a person’s temperament, or personality, including that of an OT. Using facts and strong evidence when making decisions related to critical professional goals fits seamlessly into the scientifically trained OT mind. Understanding the temperament of OTs and occupational therapy students, as identified by the MBTI, can help educators create relevant, accessible e-learning materials for OTs. There are four dichotomies in the MBTI, but the two with the most significant impact on online learning are introvert and extrovert.

The most common learning style for students who are successful in online learning is thought to be that of an introvert, as these individuals prefer to read and reflect on information before responding, need an opportunity to pace the rate of information coming in to be processed, and benefit from time to reflect upon information before having to respond. Further, introverts, according to theory, often get lost in a face-to-face classroom full of more extroverted students who easily participate verbally.⁷

Introverts prefer to attain information by reading and reflecting on experiences found in the literature, a feature of online, asynchronous learning. While some research shows extroverts prefer to enroll in online learning⁹ “introvert personalities appear to be more successful with the learning processes. This success is due, in part, because introverts need space and time alone to learn, making the Web learning environment ideal.”⁶ Nonetheless, it is important to realize that with the surge of online learning, students are seeking online options for convenience, not necessarily for learning preference, and so online learning activities have begun to reflect the needs of a diverse learner profile.⁶

Extroverts get their energy from others — being in crowds, through group interactions, and by active engagement. They like to act and think about those actions later and can feel isolated or deprived when they are cut off from interactions with others. They are motivated by others and the novelty they find from relating to others. They are quick to share their thoughts and can sometimes overwhelm others who are quiet or more pensive. They gather information by interviewing others, through verbal fencing, and through lively exchanges. They like the real time, or synchronous, learning available in chat rooms and conference calls and other real-time active discourse.

Since students with the highest level of interaction with instructors and other students are the ones who are most successful,^2,6 regardless of extrovert or introvert tendencies, online instruction has evolved to reflect this shift. For example, the online master’s program at California’s San Jose State University includes a café in which students and instructors meet to casually discuss assignments, much like what happens in on-campus face-to-face environments. TUI University, an accredited online university, issues headsets to each student to facilitate synchronic peer-to-peer and student-to-instructor dialogue during online lectures.

How do extroverts and introverts differ in online learning platforms? Extroverts like active, synchronous communications that allow them to express themselves verbally. Extroverts have an easier time engaging actively with the instructor and other students, even in this virtual online environment. However, they can be prone to speaking before thinking and can benefit from the opportunity to flex into a more read-and-reflect learning style, similar to that of an introvert.⁷ This can help extroverts develop strong skills needed in higher education as students and instructors.

Introverts, conversely, appreciate the opportunity to post comments after they have had time for thoughtful contemplation, and they can pace themselves before they respond to assigned materials and questions. Introverts prefer to learn out of time or through asynchronous methods of instruction because with the time to deliberate and formulate their responses, they can then step forward with a voice even in an online crowd of aggressive extroverts.⁷ This meditative time allows introverts to learn how to interact with instructors and fellow students in a more active manner than they might in a face-to-face classroom environment and gain self-expression skills critical to advanced professional practice or instruction.

Myers-Briggs for OTs

The primary dichotomies of the MBTI can be explained this way: “Extroversion and introversion are two different ways we interact with the world; judging and perceiving are two different ways we prefer to construct our lives.”⁶

Those who deal with the outer world with a judging attitude hold deadlines sacred. They are self-starters who like to follow a plan and decide on human values and needs. They need constructivist formats of online learning and miss face-to-face interaction but have no need for a synchronous learning environment. They prefer asynchronistic learning methods and benefit from designs that build online communities, virtual classrooms, and assignments that require collaboration with distance colleagues.⁷ Feedback that encourages self-improvement is ideal for this personality temperament. Those who fall into the perceiving (P) style are pragmatic, open to new experiences, and accommodating to those experiences. They like winging it and are confident that if they step forward before they have a plan completely in place, it will turn out. They tend to wiggle away from being pinned down to a commitment that will put their valued freedom at risk. They like to learn in novel environments and are often the first to dive into new learning environments. For example, they were likely the first to download a podcast from the AOTA Web site. They don’t miss face-to-face interactions and can be quite content with asynchronous learning environments like this CE module, but they might want to talk about what they learned with others over lunch or start an informal journal club at work.  They are happy to work alone, content with the swirl of concepts forming in their own minds, and inspired by what they’ve gathered from their own research and inquiry.⁷ Feedback that encourages synthesis and structure is ideal for this personality temperament.

Online learning for OTs and occupational therapy students has been explored in the literature in regard to specific content areas¹⁰ and behaviors of students as a function of personality styles. While there is controversy in the literature, studies seem to agree that OTs are, as a whole, interacting with their world as introverts and approaching their world from a judging perspective. One researcher demonstrated that OTs tend toward feeling, over thinking, and judging rather than perceiving. They most frequently fall into the Introvert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging (ISTJ) personality type, asking questions that ensure they are following established procedures that will be effective and useful.¹¹ The most common MBTI types for students who are seeking an undergraduate degree in healthcare are INFP and ENFP¹² OTs fall into two primary categories: ENFJ and ISTJ. And while these temperaments differ from other undergraduate healthcare students, they align exactly to what has been found to be the most common MBTI of online learning students: ISTJ.⁶

How does knowing the learning profiles of occupational therapy students help in the design of courses offered in e-learning modalities? Students’ proactive personality along with their learning goal orientation influenced their perception of the overall quality and satisfaction of e-learning courses and environment.⁴ Of the 76 occupational therapy programs in the U.S., only 6% offer a substantial portion (more than 50%) of their curriculum online. Online continuing education, on the other hand, has increased significantly as an option for staying current in the profession, advancing skills, and meeting licensure requirements. Students in online nursing programs became better independent learners, increased their self-discipline as students, and reported that through online learning, they delved deeper into the materials and learned to trust their own judgments as independent learners^.2

Online Education for OTs

Traditional interactions between learner and educator have been reconfigured as one of consumer and service provider as the delivery of education becomes increasingly commodified.¹³ OTs have unique demands for online learning; but at the same time, given the urgent need for therapists who can advance to become academicians, online learning environments are morphing to become more appealing to therapists. Providing concrete explanations of how online learning fits OTs’ learning objectives will entice them to step onto the Web-based learning platform as a way to achieve their professional goals.

The category ISTJ suggests OTs are principally reliable; they hold solid convictions that give them unwavering ideas; and they use these ideologies to formulate ideas, personal plans, and client interventions. They use sensing in their inner life and use their thinking judgment to run their outer world. They respect science and facts; yet they trust their tacit knowledge, and they use this holistic picture to help them take calculated risks. While they enter situations with caution, once in, they persevere with remarkable drive. Educators must teach occupational therapy students to be health professionals, and this involves teaching practice skills, ethics, and professional values.¹³ Of particular import is the value of occupation and meaningful participation as both a means and an end to therapy, the characteristic and belief that distinguishes occupational therapy personnel from other healthcare professionals. Occupational therapy educators, then, serve as role models to this centralizing theme and must demonstrate sensitivity to the needs, values, and priorities of clients.

In the first case scenario, Natalie is an ISTJ personality type, according the Myers Briggs Inventory. Wendy is an ENFJ personality. Some studies indicate OTs are more frequently ENFJs.^14,15 However, in general, ENFJs are rare, making up only about 5% of the population. They tend to be strong leaders who have an unusual charisma. They value cooperation, and others turn to them for support and nurturance. They can, at times, take on too much of the burdens or feelings of others and are at risk for burnout. The can also tend towards being idealistic, holding themselves and others to very high standards, and they can persevere when others would stop and ask for help. When learning in online programs, they need to have the opportunity to see what is realistic, as their personal referencing systems cannot be trusted in isolation to set objectives for assignments and projects. Since they’re more skillful when communicating face-to-face than in writing, online learning with discussion groups and peer interactions help them to excel. Online learning needs to connect them to issues they find stimulating and present opportunities to meet others in the program, share ideas, and engage in discussion questions. These students need to feel connected to the instructors and the assignments need to be talked out as well as written down. The extroverts tend to lead the conversations, risk being the first to answer, and feel comfortable diving in with complex ideas. Online learning affords them the opportunity to hear others they may otherwise outshine.

Making Online Learning a Fit for OT Students

Learner satisfaction and achievement can be met by fostering self-directed communities of learners, facilitating critical reflection, and both asynchronous and synchronous communication, which can build strong on line communities that individualize the teaching environment such that it meets the diverse learning needs of an online student body.⁷

Considering other types of learners, online education can explore methods of teaching to a diverse learner profile, incorporating all learning styles,¹ or consciously create methods that support the OT learner to excel, thus making the program tailor made for those whom are desired and purposefully complex for those who fail to meet the criteria.

In general, there is a portion of OTs who have yet to jump on board with e-learning opportunities. Getting the word out to OTs who might be interested in online learning opportunities but have hesitated due to misperceptions that online learning is not a fit with an occupational therapy learning style is a pivotal next step in education.

There is a faculty shortage in occupational therapy academic programs across the nation, and this shortage seems to be in part due to the shortage of OTs with advanced terminal degrees.¹³ Helping therapists and therapy assistants attain advanced degrees in convenient ways is paramount to a profession committed to evidence-based practice, elevating the profession to stay in step with scientific practice, contributing to scholarship, and remaining a critical contributor to health as they move into the second century as a profession. Occupational therapy is currently considered a recession-proof industry; as a result, online learning opportunities will be expanded to meet educational demands. AOTA lists all the occupational therapy programs and occupational therapy associate programs in the U.S., as well as those with online options. Therapists who wish to earn advanced degrees in related fields, such as health science, psychology, and family studies will find many options for online learning as well. Interested in more information about your personality type and how it affects your career as an OT? Check out these online resources and dive into your next educational adventure — maybe we’ll meet in a café somewhere, avatar to avatar!