DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-LEARNING MATERIAL TO IMPROVE VISUAL GAIT ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION:
Visual Gait Analysis is an important exploratory test for defining the main goals which guide physical therapy treatment. It is based on the analysis limited range of movement during human gait. For this reason visual estimation skill should be learned during the Physical therapy degree. Video would be useful to remark details to reach these educational objectives (Liu L, 1997; Christie A, 1990; Bernhardt J. et al, 2001; Christopher E, 2007). This research attempts to describe the development of an e-learning material for educational process in the virtual learning environment: Moodle.

METHODS:
After Ethics Committee approval the research team specified objectives -according to Bloom’s taxonomy- and video contents. Secondly script and resources list were made. Simultaneously economical costs were calculated to check out the viability of the study. Afterwards 30 patients with lower limb and spine inadequate movement -diagnosed by neuromusculoskeletal disfunction- were chosen. From all of them 20 patients accepted to take part in this study consisting in physical exploration and walking recording. Next step the media team edited two videos with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, as a result, we obtained the frontal and lateral vision according to the real Visual Gait Analysis. Finally, videos were turned from “.avi” into “.flv” to be able to be reproduced them in Moodle.

RESULTS:
The e-learning material is made up by 20 clinical cases with two videos each one. Every video has got an introduction and the gait recordings. The introduction frames have the clue of the problem coming from the anamnesis that includes: age, sex, profession, medical diagnosis and pain scale during exploration (Visual Analog Scale from 0 to 10). The following frames show two different views of patient’s gait along a 4 meter walking path during 1 minute average. In the lateral view can be seen three right gait waling paths and three left ones: there is a general shot, a half superior shot and a half inferior shot. The frontal view one has an anterior and posterior shot. The entire e-learning material lasts 40 minutes.

CONCLUSION:
This study details the steps and professionals needed in making an e-learning material to improve Visual Gait Analysis. Clinical cases in video support associated to a specific test to guide observation in Moodle could allow improve training and precise evaluation of visual estimation of range of movement.