STUDENTS' PREFERENCES WITHIN DIFFERENT LEARNING TOOLS FOR STUDYING THE PRACTICAL COMPONENT OF A SUBJECT IN THE PHYSIOTHERAPY DEGREE

Background:
Learning tools should arise students’ interest to get the role of facilitating the teaching-learning process [1]. So, nowadays, taking into account, the European Higher Education Area and the Docentia Program, this is an interesting field to be explored by university professors [2]. Last academic year, rubrics were introduced as teaching material in the practical component of the subject Clinical Specialties IV in the Physiotherapy Degree of the University of Valencia, but students also had lecturer’s videos and their own class notes or videos, so it was not well known which were the most preferred learning tools to acquire learning competences.

Purpose:
To analyze the most preferred learning-tools employed by third course physiotherapy students in order to achieve practical competences in the subject Clinical Specialties IV.

Methods:
A survey type study was carried out. One hundred fifty-eight students (56.33% women, mean age 22.33 ± 3.62 years) participated. The practical component of the subject was composed of 7 practices about neurodevelopment (P1 and P2), an orofacial physiotherapy (P3), therapeutic exercises in ataxia (P4), proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (P5), and children assessment and treatment (P6 and P7). Students had different learning tools to study: lecturer’s videos (only in P1 and P2), class notes, student’s videos and rubrics (in all except P2). A 13-item questionnaire about students’ learning tools they had used for studying the practical component of the subject was developed. Finally, a descriptive study of the questionnaire was performed and internal consistency of the questionnaire was determined using the coefficient α (Cronbach alpha).

Results:
Rubrics were employed by students to prepare practical content in all practices in which they were available (100%). Class notes and rubrics were the most used learning tools in P3 (n=101;63.92%), P4 (n=96;60.76%), P5 (n=78; 49.37%) and P6 (n=75;47.7%). In P1, the most used materials were lecturer’s video, rubrics and class notes (n=71;44.94%), and in P2 were lecturer’s video and class notes (n=89;56.33%). In P7, the most used materials were rubrics, student’s video and class notes (n=50;31.65%).Total reliability of the scale was good (α = 0.794).

Conclusions:
Rubrics and class notes were the most preferred materials to study the practical component of the subject Clinical Specialties IV. However, lecturer’s video was also highly used in those practices in which was offered. Therefore, rubrics and lecturer’s video of practical content in the Physiotherapy Degree should be provided to students in order to facilitate their teaching-learning process.

References:
[1] Sánchez-Sánchez ML, Espí-López GV, Ruescas-Nicolau MA. Satisfacción de los estudiantes pregrado de Fisioterapiacon el material docente facilitado por el profesorado. En prensa 2016. Cuest. fisioter. 2016, 45(1): 3-18.
[2] Gros Salvat B. La investigación sobre docencia universitaria: retos e iniciativas. En: Carreras Barnés et al. Propuestaspara el cambio docente en la universidad. Barcelona:OCTAEDRO/ICE-UV; 2006. p. 33-48.