ABSTRACT
Counseling concerns a vital portion of the work of most practitioners in the field of psychology, and education in the necessary skills is therefore considered very important. For this reason, the Psychology Curriculum at the University of Groningen incorporates a number of courses aimed at teaching students basic and more advanced communication skills. For many years, psychology students have been intensively trained within the tradition of the ‘cumulative micro-counseling method’ (Lang & Van der Molen, 1992). With the recent expansion of information and communication technology, the question arose whether it would be possible to use modern techniques to enhance and modernize skill training. Therefore, in 1996 the department of Psychology of the University of Groningen started a project aimed at developing computerized multimedia programs for professional skills. These training programs were designed in self-instructional form, that
is, students could work through the materials independently, without supervision. In this way students were stimulated in their independence and teacher input could be applied more efficiently in those parts of the training where it was indispensable. In this paper, the development and implementation of GEVAT (GEspreksVAardigheidsTraining), a computerized multimedia program that is developed for a basic course in counseling skills, will be discussed. The chapter starts with a description of the theoretical background and design of the basic training in counseling skills. Next, the possible advantages of implementing modern multimedia are discussed, followed by an overview of the possibilities and limits of self-instruction in basic skill training. Third, the design of the traditional training in counseling skills is described, followed by a detailed overview of the development of the self-instructional computer program. The chapter ends with a short evaluation of the computer program.
