Abstract:

Teaching and learning practical concepts are frequent challenges for both teachers and students in areas like Physical Therapy. Many teachers often add visual notes like photos to make easier for students to prepare practical exams during non-classroom work. However, the static characteristics of this material difficult students to learn relevant details, which increase their frustration and the necessity of assistance from individual tutoring with teachers. In this sense, new technologies are increasing the possibilities to create visual dynamic notes based on augmented reality (AR) as innovative technology that may offer additional advantages for the teaching and learning process. However, very few teachers take advantage of AR for creating learning material in practical areas of Physical Therapy. Our study aimed to evaluate the influence of including learning material for practical contents based on AR in the satisfaction, utility and learning of undergraduate Physical Therapy students. For this end, seventeen resources based on AR were created for a practical subject of the Physical Therapy degree. All the students had access to these resources three weeks before the practical exam. After the exam, all the students were asked to reply an anonymous questionnaire about level of satisfaction with the resources, level of use during non-classroom work (utility and frequency of use) and learning results (qualifications). Also, number of individual tutoring regarding these practical contents was counted during these three weeks and the general level of satisfaction of students with this part of the subject was considered. Fifty-six (23 males and 33 females; 23.4 ± 6.9 years) students voluntary fulfilled the questionnaire. The level of satisfaction of students regarding the AR resources showed a punctuation of 4.7 ± 0.6 points (0 to 5 scale). Regarding the level of use of the AR resources, students replied that these resources had an utility of 4.4 ± 0.7 points (0 to 5 scale) for learning practical contents. The frequency of use was 33% for “always used during non-classroom work”, 27% for “almost always used during non-classroom work”, 20% for “sometimes used during non-classroom work”, 13% for “very few times used during non-classroom work” and 7% for “never used it”. The mean of qualifications obtained in the exam was 7.6 ± 1.5 points (0 to 10 scale). No individual tutoring was needed after creating and publishing the AR resources. The general level of satisfaction with this part of the subject was 9.6 ± 0.6 (0 to 10 scale). As a conclusion, teaching resources based on AR are useful material to support non-classroom work of students that should learn practical contents, achieving a high level of satisfaction among students and decreasing the necessity of individual tutoring from teachers prior practical exams.

Keywords:

Innovation, augmented reality, practical contents, physiotherapy.