Basic clinical skills, such as measuring joint range of motion and gait training, form the foundation for other interventions physical therapists employ on a routine basis. Typically, students are initially exposed to these skills in their texts and then see live demonstrations in the classroom. This is followed by practice opportunities with other students while being supervised by the instructor. A limitation of this approach is that students only see the demonstration performed 1-2 times by an instructor before they practice the skill and they do not have access to the demonstration outside of class.

To optimize student learning and use of available resources, Drs. Smith, Moore and Thigpen videotaped demonstrations of basic clinical skills, narrated a description of the skills being performed, and converted the narrated video to a file format suitable for playback on a computer or portable media device. Following conversion to the appropriate format the video is made available to students through Blackboard or iTunes as a podcast. The video podcast episodes enable students to view and practice demonstrations at a time and place of their choosing, and extends the time in class for practice of techniques and formative feedback from the instructor to each student.

The faculty members consulted with CIRT staff on several topics to plan for the project, including the equipment to be used and methods for videotaping, narration, production and distribution. The video was captured to iMovie in CIRT, where it was narrated and edited before being produced as an .m4v (MPEG-4 video). The podcast files are distributed via the Podcast LX tool available in Blackboard, which allows students to view or download episodes one at a time, or to subscribe to the podcast feed with iTunes.

Drs. Smith and Moore are now planning a study to examine physical therapy student cognitive and psychomotor performance related to basic clinical skills taught with demonstrations distributed through podcasting as compared to those taught with live demonstrations.

If you are interested in creating audio or video podcasts for your classes, please contact CIRT.