May 8, 2026
Story by Natalie Kientzy, chscommunications@missouri.edu
When students enrolled in Developmental Language Disorders, a course taught by Associate Professor Beth Kelley in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, they weren’t simply settling in for a semester of lectures. Instead, the course culminated with a project that took learning by doing to a whole new level.
“We were asked to put together tools SLPs could use in therapy sessions, to collect data or to give to parents to explain disorders and support learning,” said Maggie Pitsch, a first-year master’s degree student. “The point of the project was to provide something that could be easily implemented into language disorder sessions.”
The student projects were designed to fit seamlessly into the work of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and included an implementation guide with detailed instructions that an SLP could use to deliver the language intervention practice, along with resources and supporting research.
“The idea is that they can read the outline we created and, then with the resources provided, be able to run a whole session,” Pitsch said. “We were split into roughly 15 groups, so by the end of the course, we had created nearly 15 intervention sets that could be used.”
Kate Corrigan, a first-year Master of Health Science in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences student, was paired with Pitsch for the project. Corrigan said the project wasn’t a race to the finish — it was a slow and steady process that was built over the semester.
“Dr. Kelley gave us a lot of support leading up to the project,” Corrigan said. “Almost everything we did before was building towards the end goal.”
Corrigan and Pitsch’s toolkit centered on graphic organizers — such as Venn diagrams or cause and effect charts — for expository intervention, which they had studied for a previous assignment. This research provided a solid starting point for creating a toolkit packed with evidence-based resources.
“Children with language disorders may have a hard time with the complex language in textbooks and other books found in schools,” Corrigan said. “Our goal was to reduce the intimidation of textbooks and frame the content in a way that highlights important vocabulary words and concepts.”
The pair’s toolkit included a variety of graphic organizers alongside a breakdown of how each organizer could be used for different subjects and language targets. Pitsch also discovered and incorporated Diffit, an AI tool designed to adapt materials for different levels of learning. The platform includes an online library with a variety of books and school materials, as well as the option to create materials based on specific, individualized prompts, making it ideal for helping students hit language targets.
One challenge Corrigan and Pitsch faced was presenting all their information and resources in a simplified, compact way.
“We’re both very passionate, and there is just so much information out there,” Corrigan said. “However, we wanted our toolkit to be something an SLP could pick up, read and immediately go into their session and implement.”
At the end of the semester, students presented their toolkits to their professors and clinical educators. Corrigan and Pitsch found it rewarding to share their work and explore the resources curated by their classmates.
“Hearing people say that they didn’t know our resources were available, and they were planning to use them was really rewarding,” Pitsch said. “It’s also nice because when I’m starting as a new clinician, I’ll have the toolkits we created to take with me.”
The project’s value extends beyond learning and into the wider speech-language pathology community. By translating current research into practical, ready-to-use materials, students helped address the time and resource constraints faced by school-based SLPs.
“Evidence-based practice is really important to our field,” Pitsch said. “Our toolkits provide that evidence-based practice in as little as two pages.”
