TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

80 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 particularly important area to explore given that counselor supervisors and educators must conduct counselor education and clinical training programs in an ethical manner whether in traditional, hybrid, or online formats (American Counseling Association, 2014). Online Clinical Skills Training Concerns about the ability to translate clinical skills in an online environment are prevalent among educators (Barrio Minton, 2019; Perry, 2017). There is little research to facilitate changed attitudes around this common mindset. Researchers have examined the efficacy of distance students’ clinical skills development in the mental health professions. Murdock et al. (2012) assessed students’ skill development learning outcomes between online and in-person counseling skills courses based on Ivey and Ivey’s (1999) counseling skills training textbook. Participants included 19 students enrolled online and 18 students enrolled in person. Students were taught by the same instructor and the courses were facilitated similarly. A counselor served as an independent evaluator and 15 transcripts of counseling skills sessions were randomly selected. Results showed no significant difference in basic counseling skills based on the mode of course delivery. Similarly, Murdock et al. (2012) and Ouellette et al. (2006) found no significant differences between online and F2F sections of an interviewing skills course for undergraduate social work students. Wilke et al. (2016) conducted a quantitative study to compare master’s social work students’ development of clinical assessment and clinical skills of crisis intervention between 74 students enrolled in an in-person class and 78 students in an asynchronous online class. All student participants were taught by the same instructor and were given the same assignments, including an assessment and treatment plan of a fictional case and a digital role-play. The role-play assignment was graded by a doctoral student who was blinded to the course delivery format. The results showed that there was no significant difference for students’ skill development between F2F and online classes. Wilke and colleagues concluded that clinical skills seem to be taught as effectively online as in a traditional classroom within the context of the same instructor. Bender and Dykeman (2016) explored students’ perceptions of supervision in both online and F2F contexts. Counseling faculty and doctoral students provided supervision to 17 F2F students and 12 synchronous online students. Supervision took place for 90 minutes each week in a 10-week period. A posttest assessment, the Group Supervisor Impact Scale (Getzelman, 2003), was given to all participants to measure supervisee satisfaction, self-efficacy, and the supervisory relationship. The results showed no significant differences in the students’ perceived perspective of supervision effectiveness between the online or traditional supervision students. These articles stand out as starting a base of evidence for the effectiveness of online clinical training in counselor education; however, much more qualitative and quantitative research is necessary regarding a multitude of educational aspects connected to CACREP standards to sufficiently evidence the quality of online clinical training. Assessment and Evaluation of Online Clinical Training Reicherzer and colleagues (2012) pointed out challenges for online and hybrid programs in observing and assessing students’ counseling skills and practice because of the potential limits of a distance learning environment. Various counselor educators described similar challenges in providing experiential clinical training in a remote learning community. For example, Snow and colleagues (2018) surveyed 31 online counselor educators to investigate the features of current online counseling programs and educators’ online teaching experience, including the challenges they encountered and the strategies they used to ensure students’ success. The results indicated that some of the major challenges related to