Abstract:

Anatomy learning is a keystone to all health professions. Contents are most often shared from teacher to student in a lecture-type way. Commonly, the teacher relies in the use of pictures, anatomical or cadaveric models. Most typically, the student is prone to a passive learning experience. In the Physical Therapy Degree program, Anatomy is especially important due to its undoubtedly relationship with other different subjects. However, according to different authors, it is well established that students’ retention of contents significantly increases (up to 60%) when the students take more active roles. Thus, using active learning approaches may be useful for students when studying anatomy related subjects.

For this reason, the main purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of information technologies helped Physiotherapy students to increase their self-perceived anatomy skills.

This study was conducted at University of Lleida (SPAIN), and it included 72 Physiotherapy students, who were split into groups of 4 people. Each group was responsible of taking a picture of a real bone, finding out its relevant traits and explaining their work to the rest of the class. After the traditional lecture, students were invited to access the website “www.anatomia.cat” to help consolidate their newly-acquired knowledge. In addition, a multiple-choice questionnaire for participants was put together. The questionnaire was given out by a third party (not the Professor of Anatomy) and filled in by students on a voluntary basis.

Results showed that information technologies were very well accepted by participants, probably because adding e-learning to traditional classes makes contents more compatible to modern life, enabling students to learn independently from their teacher, class-room materials and class schedules.

Keywords:

e-learning, anatomy, ICT.