Physiotherapy Students’ Perception of their Educational Environment: A study to identify the areas of concern for remedial measures at two Schools of Physiotherapy in Malaysia.

Abstract

Introduction: In order to produce competent physiotherapy graduates with the generic attributes much sought after by the health care providers in the country, the higher education institution needs to ensure the educational environment of the school is positive. Students' positive perception of their educational environment would facilitate their learning experience to be more meaningful and relevant. Objective: The aim of this study was to measure physiotherapy students' perception of their educational environment at the School of Physiotherapy AIMST University and Kolej Sains Kesihatan Bersekutu Sungai Buloh and to identify the areas of concern for remedial measures. Method: This research was a cross sectional study consisting of two phases using both quantitative followed by qualitative methods. The DREEM inventory consisting of 50 items under 5 domains was circulated to all the students (N=158) from both schools (AIMST and KSKB). The item mean scored below 2.00 were considered as problem areas and it was explored further through focus group discussion (N=12) as a qualitative study. Result: The overall mean score on the 50 items was 132.84 (SD 19.22) out of 200. Students' Perception of Learning (SPOL) scored the highest 32.34 (SD 4.17) followed by students' perception of Atmosphere (SPOA) 30.63 (SD 4.84), Students Perception of Teachers (SPOT) scored 30.52 (SD 3.98),Students Academic Self Perception (SASP) scored 22.03 (SD 3.20) and the last domain Students' Social Self Perception (SSSP) scored the least 17.32 (SD 19.22).All the domains scored toward more positive side of the educational environment. Four items scored less than 2.00 and these items were explored further with focus group discussion. Students from both schools had similarities as well as differences in their views over the concerned areas. Conclusion: This study revealed important information regarding the low scored items. Overall the students from both schools perceived their schools positively. Implementing the remedial measures for the problem areas would further enhance the respective educational environment and thus provide a conducive place for physiotherapy students to excel in their academic endeavour.

Assessment of the educational environment of physiotherapy students at the University of Rwanda using the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM)

“…For instance, in one of the institutions, the College of Medicine at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, the curriculum was reported as overcrowded and teacher centred. [11] However, the score found in the current study was lower than those found in Nigeria (131/200), [10] Malaysia (133/200), [9] Sri Lanka (141/200) [16] and Sweden (150/200). [2] This may reflect that these institutions are fairly innovative in terms of providing a studentcentred approach to education, [17] and the physiotherapy lecturers at UR should explore how they can learn from good practices in those countries.…”

“…It is not appropriate to fully compare this study with others, because of contextual dissimilarities and different sample sizes used. However, while contrasting and interpreting the scores against the guidelines proposed by the developers of the DREEM instrument, it emerged that this study has a common main finding with other similar studies conducted elsewhere, such as in India, [8] Malaysia, [9] Nigeria [10] and Sweden, [2] for example. All these studies reported that students view their EE in general as more positive than negative, thereby having an optimistic view of their learning situation, lecturers, educational atmosphere and academic and social life.…”

Perceptions of the educational environment among undergraduate physical therapy students in a competency-based curriculum at the University of Chile

“…The rating of the EE as ‘more positive than negative’ found in this sample is similar to what has been reported in other studies evaluating physical therapy programs [2,4,12,17,18]; however, we obtained lower values for the total mean score (120.9), which could have been due to the low scores of the perception of learning and social perceptions subscales affecting the total mean score, similar to the findings of Odole et al [4]. These findings are similar to the scores obtained by Sunkad et al [17], who evaluated health care programs and found that physical therapy had the lowest scores.…”

“…The problem areas identified in this study are similar to those found in other physical therapy programs, including a teaching-centered approach that overemphasizes memorization, stress or fatigue due an overloaded curriculum and lack of information about mental health support, and cheating in the program due an overloaded curriculum [2,4,10,12,18], and these factors must be taken into account in the evaluation of the new curriculum of the program.…”

Perceptions and Experiences of Physiotherapy Students Regarding their Academic Year Environment in a Health Sciences University in Tshwane, Gauteng Province, South Africa

“…Physiotherapy students' perceptions regarding their learning environment has shown to be of great importance, since it might have an effect on the academic performances. Such study was done in Malaysia and results showed that students had positive perception towards their educational environment (Veasuvalingam and Arzuman, 2014). However, campus experience also matters as it is in fact the actual happening around students' and their studies.…”