Clinical educators' perspectives on transitioning to telesupervision: Experiences piloting a telepractice stuttering simulation placement

Speech pathology clinical education iscurrently experiencing significant innovationwith clinical educators increasingly requiredto transition to online modalities includingtelesupervision. This study reports onqualitative interviews conducted with fourclinical educators who undertooktelesupervision of final year speech-languagepathology students during a telepracticestuttering simulated placement. Four themes emerged from the interviews: relationships with and between students; reflexive,collaborative learning; sustainability; and flexibility-enhanced learning opportunities.Successful transition to online supervision was underpinned by an openness to learning,well-developed problem-solving skills, a strong capacity for self-reflection, and peer support. The findings of this research challenge us to consider telesupervision not as supplementary, or “second-best” but rather as an opportunity to increase the quality of clinical education, variety of clinical expertise and experiences, and to increase capacity for student-centred learning. Further, this research demonstrates that telesupervision has potential to address rural and regional access to speech-language pathology education while creating workforce-ready graduates.