Effect of Interactive Multimedia on Basic Clinical Psychomotor Skill Performance by Physical Therapist Students

Effects of video podcasting on psychomotor and cognitive performance, attitudes and study behaviour of student physical therapists

“…This finding is consistent with findings from previous investigations using other forms of digital and electronic media used in health care education (Ford et al, 2005;Howerton et al, 2004;Kinney et al, 1997;Nousiainen et al, 2008;Osborn & Tentinger, 2003;Smith et al, 2006b;Wiketen, Patterson, Antonio, De La Cruz, & Buxton, 1998). However, neither method was successful at producing high overall practical nor written examination scores in the present study (see Table 2).…”

“…While this may be a weakness when the student population is small, the lack of required interaction may be beneficial when teaching a large group (Kelly et al, 2009). As student physical therapists tend to perform equally with learning via instructional multimedia and with live demonstration (Barker, 1998;Ford et al, 2005;Kinney et al, 1997;Smith et al, 2006b), podcasts may provide a method to reach a large population without sacrificing performance on written and practical examinations. Weaknesses and dislikes students associated with live demonstration included lack of viewing repetition and that the demonstrations were time consuming.…”

“…Most recently, health care educators have utilised digital and electronic media to teach medical students basic surgical techniques (Nousiainen, Brydges, Backstein, & Dobrowski, 2008) and paediatric abdominal examination procedures (Frisby, Lane, Carr, & Gottlieb, 2006); nursing students how to measure blood pressure (Bauer, Geront, & Huynh, 2001); dental students how to interpret *Corresponding author. Email: moore.w@lynchburg.edu radiological findings (Howerton, Platin, Ludlow, & Tyndall, 2004); and physical therapist students how to perform lower extremity joint examinations (Smith, Jones, Cavanaugh, Venn, & Wilson, 2006b) and musculoskeletal special tests (Ford, Mazzone, & Taylor, 2005;Osborn & Tentinger, 2003). Reported advantages of digital and electronic media in education include selfpaced learning, flexibility in scheduling study time, improved access to materials, enhanced ability of the instructor to utilise multiple teaching strategies (Ford et al, 2005;Osborn & Tentinger, 2003;Smith, Cavanaugh, Jones, Venn, & Wilson, 2006a), decreased faculty instruction time (Ford et al, 2005;Kosmahl, 1994), repetition of instructional material (Smith et al, 2006b) and the ability to add graphical enhancements (Boucher, Hunter, & Henry, 1999;TothCohen, 1994).…”

“…Research specific to physical therapists' education has focused on the use of CD-ROMs, video, digital video images and other forms of computer-assisted instruction to introduce and/or teach cognitive and psychomotor skills (Ford et al, 2005;Kinney et al, 1997;Osborn & Tentinger, 2003;Smith et al, 2006aSmith et al, , 2006b. While education at all levels has embraced podcasting to distribute lectures and other course content to campus-based learners and distance learners (Copley, 2007;Evans, 2008;Laing, Wootton, & Irons, 2006), no study, that the authors are aware of, has specifically investigated podcasting of basic psychomotor content to students preparing for careers in physical therapy.…”

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Computer Assisted Learning to Improve the Clinical Examination Skills of First Year Medical Undergraduates

“…The study of CAL application and the acquisition of psychomotor skills among students and the relationship to teaching methodologies is a relatively new area of research in medical education [8,9]. Use of computer-assisted instructional material as an adjunct to teaching health sciences schools is increasing [10,11].…”