Abstract:

Introduction:
Traditional teaching methods have been based mainly in theory classes, which used the teacher's verbal presentation of a specific subject as a didactic strategy in a downstream unidirectional way (teacher to student). With the appearance of the new degrees in Higher Education, teachers need to adapt the teaching methods to the requirements of the curricula and use tools to favor motivation and knowledge assimilation. On the other hand, theory class is necessary in most subjects, so additional strategies are needed to facilitate meaningful learning or skill assessment. Our aim was to test the utility and applicability of an ICT-based interactive tool (Kahoot!) to evaluate the conceptual knowledge, and to identify as compared to its core analytics, possible areas that are problematic to the students during the course of “General Pathology” in the Degree of Physiotherapy.

Methods:
Fifty-five students of the second year Degree in Physiotherapy were included. We used one questionnaire (10 items total) which was administered by the end of the 10th theory class. The students used their mobile devices to access Kahoot! and they answered four-choice questions in which only one was correct. They had 30 seconds to answer. The items referred to the first 10 theory lessons, which comprised different thematic blocks: concept of health, medical history, classification of pathologies, genetics, pathologies related to radiations, physical and toxic agents, heat as a cause of illness, pH and toxic pathologies, infections and hydration. All lectures were made by the same teacher. We measured individual score and mean time to answer. One-way ANOVA with repeated measures (Tuckey’s B posthoc) and bivariate correlations were used for statistical analysis (p<0.05).

Results:
We did find differences in the score among the four different tests [F(9,219.8)=18.03, P<0.001, η2=0.23]. Tukey’s post-hoc showed four subsets of groups, being the lower scored cluster the one composed by questions 2,1,5,10 and 9. Those lessons addressed the concept of health, genetics, heat as a cause of illness, pH and hydration pathologies. The best score was obtained in questions 3 and 7, related to physical agents and toxic pathologies, respectively. When we correlated total score and time to answer in each question, we found an inverse correlation (p<0.001), but Spearman’s rho value was rather low (r=-0.395).

Conclusion:
Quantitative analysis by means of the use of an ITC-based interactive tool as Kahoot! enabled us to identify precise problems in the assimilation of concepts in the subject “General Pathology”, which in turn will serve to improve this particular group of lessons before evaluation takes place. The weak correlation found between time to answer and the score in each question could suggest that students had difficulties identifying the correct answer, which is understandable since there is a high variability in their strategies to study.

Keywords:

Mobile application, higher education, physiotherapy, general pathology.