On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training

Well-developed interpersonal skills are crucial for all social interactions. However, understanding how interpersonal skills are taught or learned, and how technology can play a part in this, is yet an under-researched area in CSCW and HCI research. To start addressing this gap, our research explore...

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Main Authors: Slovak, Petr, Thieme, Anja, Murphy, David, Tennent, Paul, Olivier, Patrick, Fitzpatrick, Geraldine
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2015
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34094/
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author Slovak, Petr
Thieme, Anja
Murphy, David
Tennent, Paul
Olivier, Patrick
Fitzpatrick, Geraldine
author_facet Slovak, Petr
Thieme, Anja
Murphy, David
Tennent, Paul
Olivier, Patrick
Fitzpatrick, Geraldine
author_sort Slovak, Petr
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Well-developed interpersonal skills are crucial for all social interactions. However, understanding how interpersonal skills are taught or learned, and how technology can play a part in this, is yet an under-researched area in CSCW and HCI research. To start addressing this gap, our research explores the learning processes of counselling students, for whom developing interpersonal skills forms a fundamental part of their university education. We followed an iterative process to gain an in-depth understanding of a specific counselling program in the UK, combining interviews and low-fidelity technology prompts. Overall, 26 participants comprising tutors, students and expert counsellors took part. Our findings first provide insights into the highly collaborative and social learning process of the students. We highlight the complexity of interpersonal reflection as a crucial process for developing counselling skills, and identify the challenges to learning that students face. Second, we build on this understanding to draw out empirically grounded design considerations around opportunities for technology innovation in this setting.
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
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publishDate 2015
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spelling nottingham-340942020-05-04T17:01:53Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34094/ On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training Slovak, Petr Thieme, Anja Murphy, David Tennent, Paul Olivier, Patrick Fitzpatrick, Geraldine Well-developed interpersonal skills are crucial for all social interactions. However, understanding how interpersonal skills are taught or learned, and how technology can play a part in this, is yet an under-researched area in CSCW and HCI research. To start addressing this gap, our research explores the learning processes of counselling students, for whom developing interpersonal skills forms a fundamental part of their university education. We followed an iterative process to gain an in-depth understanding of a specific counselling program in the UK, combining interviews and low-fidelity technology prompts. Overall, 26 participants comprising tutors, students and expert counsellors took part. Our findings first provide insights into the highly collaborative and social learning process of the students. We highlight the complexity of interpersonal reflection as a crucial process for developing counselling skills, and identify the challenges to learning that students face. Second, we build on this understanding to draw out empirically grounded design considerations around opportunities for technology innovation in this setting. 2015-02-28 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Slovak, Petr, Thieme, Anja, Murphy, David, Tennent, Paul, Olivier, Patrick and Fitzpatrick, Geraldine (2015) On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training. In: 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15), 14-18 March 2015, Vancouver, Canada. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2675190
spellingShingle Slovak, Petr
Thieme, Anja
Murphy, David
Tennent, Paul
Olivier, Patrick
Fitzpatrick, Geraldine
On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title_full On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title_fullStr On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title_full_unstemmed On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title_short On becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
title_sort on becoming a counselor: challenges and opportunities to support interpersonal skills training
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34094/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/34094/