TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 89 to enroll in a program and successfully complete it without needing to move and leave family or work obligations. With proper training of instructors, clear expectations for students, and legally and ethically appropriate technology, the practicum and internship course in an online format can be an effective modality for counseling students. Discussion and Recommendations for Future Research This article has overviewed the current literature regarding master’s-level online clinical training, provided a reference for challenges and opportunities regarding online pedagogy in counselor education courses, and described examples of online clinical course structures. When facilitating online clinical training, instructors must understand the unique nature of counseling and be intentional about maintaining student relationships within the realm of technology. This is especially critical for ensuring that the program strategically integrates the technology to advance the delivery of the program rather than the program heavily relying on the use of technology. In this article, we have identified humanistic approaches and specific strategies to ensure that meaningful teacher– student relationships and rigorous assessments remain the focus of instruction when technology is integrated. Facilitating personal and professional growth in distance counselor education presents many challenges to students and instructors. If instructors can intentionally and creatively use technology to promote distance students’ learning and training, a distance delivery format can reach students who would not have the opportunity to pursue counselor education. Currently, the online delivery of counselor training skills is outpacing foundational research literature. For attitudes and pedagogy to change around the online academic environment, more research is needed. Future research could best focus on comparing the outcome of students’ counseling skills, including multicultural counseling competencies, between traditional and online courses. Skills needed for building rapport in the online environment may differ from F2F settings. Therefore, research regarding how the instructors’ and students’ use of language online impact the helping relationship and teacher–student relationship in virtual classrooms can be valuable. There also is a need to explore counselor educators’ understanding and experiences in conducting online clinical training, as well as students’ perspectives in receiving online clinical training and supervision. Future studies also might investigate different course structures and delivery methods for specific clinical skills courses so that the best methods for online clinical training could be applied by more counselor education programs. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript. References Allen, I. E., Seaman, J., Poulin, R., & Straut, T. T. (2016). Online report card: Tracking online education in the United States . https://onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/onlinereportcard.pdf American Counseling Association. (2014). 2014 ACA code of ethics . Association for Specialists in Group Work. (2000). Professional standards for the training of group workers.