Overview

My original plan was multi-focused. I wanted to create an online elective in manual physical therapy.  Second, I wanted to incorporate more technology in my teaching.  The first goal was specific and focused, and the second a bit more open-ended.

Planning

As part of my initial planning in year one of the Technology Fellowship, I focused on designing an online course for spinal manual physical therapy.  This would be an elective for the class and would be offered toward the end of their education.  The course has been designed, objectives created, and video components were made for student viewing.  However, within the year of my fellowship, our curriculum calendar changed and the time I planned to do the course was no longer available.  I was able to utilize a portion of that planning to host a course for some of our program’s Clinical Instructors and pilot the technology in that course.  The participants took video recording of themselves performing the techniques and I was able to offer feedback at the follow-up class.  I will expand on this during the summer, having the comments entirely online.  Portions of this course and the ideas we initiated have been placed in my core teaching in PTH 703.  I am using videos for techniques as well as PBL.  These can be found on Moodle: 703 2015 Management of Musculoskeletal Systems.

General

I have spent time utilizing and learning how to begin paperless exams on Moodle for both courses that I coordinate.  I have found this to be user-friendly for the most part, with the only concern being loss of a student’s wi-fi connection.  I have utilized Panopto in PTH703 for a Classification Lecture that will be utilized for the students.

Implementation

As noted, the majority of smaller items are in place in my courses.  (exams, Panopto, video techniques, and a video PBL case)  The on-line course may still be offered at a later date as part of a continuing education option.  Additionally, after multiple attempts with the technology staff, we settled on the YouTube platform for posting of student technique videos and commenting.  This will be initiated this summer.  I found that the “ask” in my continuing education offering was a bit too much for older therapists who do not have access to or are not traditionally exposed to technology in the clinic.

Next Steps

Posting and assessing maul therapy techniques using the YouTube platform will be a novel approach to learning.  I believe it will help the students excel and also lead to very focused technique performance if they are aware they are being accessed or evaluated.  I am not sure what the time commitment for this will be or how critical students will be of each other as part of the feedback process, so a reassessment of the project will be needed after the summer course.

Conclusion

Although the larger project has hit some road blocks, I have still benefited from my time with Becky and Lauren and their ability to answer my questions and guide me to use more technology.  The general steps I have put in place have given me some confidence to expand what I have put in place.