High Tech Counseling: Revisited.

The Trends section of the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD) was "reintroduced" in the Summer 2000 issue after having been omitted for several years due to space limitations and other priorities. The first article (see Hohenshil, 2000) in the reintroduction was devoted to one of the fastest developing trends not only in counseling, but also in almost every field of human endeavor. That trend was the use of technology, which continues to have profound effects in mental health, education, business, agriculture, science, religion, government, and medicine. At this time, it seems appropriate to revisit this continuing trend to see what progress has been made over the intervening years. In 2000, there were significant questions being raised in the counseling profession about how to best use this innovative set of tools (Internet, computers, interactive television, various types of more traditional audiovisual equipment, etc.). Some of these questions follow: 1. Is it possible to actually counsel people via the Internet without ever seeing them in person? If so, what special skills would such counselors have to possess? If an Internet counselor is licensed in one state, but the client is in another state, is the counselor properly licensed to provide services to that client? How is confidentiality protected when counseling via the Internet? 2. There was also a considerable number of questions for counselor education and supervision. Can the Internet and interactive television (teleconferencing) be used to effectively teach counseling knowledge and skills? If so, would this be true for all of the courses in the counselor education curriculum, some of the courses, or parts of courses? How would counselor education students react to being taught by a professor who might be hundreds, or thousands of miles away? How would faculty react to being asked to learn such new technologies and then being required to use them in their teaching? Would the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) favorably view counselor education programs that use distance education for some or all of their course work? These questions and others have been raised before and since 2000. The intense interest in responding to these questions about high tech counseling can be readily observed in the many articles devoted to this topic in counseling journals, presentations at conventions, the expansion of Internet-based counseling practice, and changes in ethical standards and counselor preparation programs. Article Reviews In the Summer 2000 issue of JCD, several articles were reviewed from the first issue of an innovative new journal, the October 1999 issue of the Journal of Technology in Counseling (JTC; see http://jtc.colstate.edu), which was the first totally online professional journal in counseling. The purpose of this Trends article is to revisit JTC to determine its progress over the years. Since its first issue in 1999, four more have been published, each dealing with various topics related to the use of technology in counseling. To provide a flavor of some of the most recent topics included in this innovative journal, we briefly review four articles from the latest issue (November 2003). We follow these reviews with a discussion of the implications of technology for counseling and counselor education. Web-Based Digital Portfolios In their article titled "Web-Based Digital Portfolios and Counselor Supervision," Barnes, Clark, and Thull (2003) provided an interesting overview of a Web-based portfolio project undertaken at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The authors discussed the importance of developing a portfolio and gave multiple uses for it, including (a) as a tool for supervisors to assess a student's growth, (b) as a means for students to demonstrate their competence and experience in a variety of professional activities, and (c) as a way to provide guidelines to assure an appropriate breadth of practicum experience. …