March 2022.
Virtual student research opportunities are continuing here at Early Markers! We are hosting three new occupational therapy students- Kiana A., Sheri K., and Ginny K. from Pacific University. The doctoral students are completing their capstones with us via Zoom and Slack to assist with our current infant studies.
Sheri’s capstone project focused on studying the efficiency in administration and inter-rater reliability of the Alberta Infant Motor Scale [AIMS] salient-set screening tool. This research will support Early Makers in the development of an efficient and reliable automated screening tool for the detection of motor delay in the first year infant.
Kiana’s capstone focused on collecting pre-pilot customer discovery insights from a questionnaire and two focus groups. The goal is to understand the experience of preterm infant parents; specifically their concerns, access to resources, experience with current health care services, and response to the EMMA app concept (now available on Google Play and the Apple app store).
The outcome of Ginny’s capstone is the study and creation of content for the EMMA app’s library of Parent Activity Modules (PAM). The PAM library will provide educational resources to parents in an accessible format to promote developmental milestones in infants using a parent-led, play-based intervention approach.
All three graduate students have found this to be a great opportunity to learn about infant development, clinical research, the administration of infant motor development assessments, and the creation of family-centered media content. Watch for their OTD capstones to be presented in poster sessions at the American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA] conference, Inspire 2023 in Kansas City, MO.
The experience has overall been wonderful for both our Early Markers team and students alike. We are excited to see how their research questions of interest take shape and help us in creating content for our EMMA app!