Systematic Review of Traditional and Telemedicine Approaches to Language Therapy and a Plea for Flipped Classroom Model

Background: Studies show many people with language disorder are in need of descent language therapy and individuals with language impairments often fail to receive effective language therapy or terminate the therapy due to various reasons including distance, cost, or ineffective therapy approaches. In education, people are confronted with similar problems and have come up with new solutions such as online learning and Flipped Classroom method. Overall, little is known about utilizing telemedicine for language therapy. Due to the promising potential of these approaches, their application to language therapy is worth being critically explored as alternative methods in mhealth. Objectives: This paper aims at exploring the application of traditional and telemedicine interventions in treatment of patients with language disorders in two steps: First, investigating telemedicine and language therapy distinctly and identifying their potentials and shortcomings. Second, discussing the results critically to determine if they can leverage mutual strengths and exemplifying the application of partial Flipped Classroom model. Methods: A systematic research was conducted on the following databases: The Cochrane Library, ERIC, MEDLINE, and Science direct. No filters were applied to restrict the retrieval by study type. The search was limited to English language, peer-reviewed, full-text articles, published between January 1, 2001 and November 18, 2016. Initially, studies on “language therapy” and “telemedicine” were searched separately. Prior to the systematic analysis of the two approaches, irrelevant papers were excluded based on the screening of titles and abstracts. Results: 1068 papers were identified, among which 37 suited the criteria for in-depth-analysis in telemedicine and 16 in language therapy. The authors discussed the potentials and shortcomings of telemedicine and language therapy in terms of prerequisites, (time-and-cost) effectiveness, user-satisfaction and professional-patient-relationship. A combination of both approaches seemed to be promising to overcome the shortcomings of the other. To exemplify, the partial Flipped Classroom model was used in introducing the linguistic feature “definiteness” in Persian language to the individuals with language disorder. Conclusion: Taking into consideration the results of the analysis, Flipped Classroom model exhibits a good deal of potential to be used in language therapy. Implementation should be further examined in empirical studies.