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N. Beamish1,2, K. Wilson2, A. Ager3,2, N. O'Reilly2
1Queen's University, School of Rehabilitation, Kingston, Canada, 2Physiopedia, London, United Kingdom, 3Ghent University, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Ghent, Belgium
Background: For the past five years Physiopedia has created and hosted, via the related online learning platform of Physioplus, yearly massive open online courses (MOOCs) on a range of physiotherapy related topics: amputee rehabilitation; physical activity; cerebral palsy; clubfoot; wheelchair service provision; and, traumatic brain injury. Open educational resources and digital health-related platforms have a prominent role in the education of students, patients and clinicians and have the potential to increase the accessibility and effectiveness of education resources to a large number of people.
Purpose: We aim to provide a narrative review of the physiotherapy-related MOOCs, and explore the trends in learner demographics and engagement over the past five years.
Methods: Physiopedia delivered six 8-week physiotherapy MOOCs from 2015-2019. Learners’ demographic information including country of origin, professional background and years of clinical experience, were collected using anonymous registration forms prior to the beginning of each course. Descriptive data were also collected to summarize the number of learners who began the course, engaged with the course material (participated in some learning activities but did not attempt or pass all of the quizzes within the program), completed each module of the MOOC, and/or completed the MOOC (submitted and passed the final assignment). In addition, a qualitative analysis was performed to identify the challenges, strengths and future directions for rehabilitation related MOOCs.
Results: 63,489 learners from over 140 countries registered to participate in Physiopedia’s MOOCs, with 3072 of these registrants residing in lower-middle income countries. Of those that registered, over 50,000 (83%) were physiotherapists. Of the individuals that registered to participate in the MOOCs, 19.6-58.0% began the courses once they were released and engagement with the course materials ranged from 64.2%-85.1%. 14.6%-35.8% of course participants completed all the modules in the MOOC and 1-26.5% of course participants completed the course by submitting and passing an optional final assignment.
Conclusion(s): Over the past five years, we have seen a steady increase in both interest and engagement with MOOCs by the global physiotherapy community. Although a small percentage of learners completed the final evaluation component of the MOOCs, the vast majority of learners engaged with the learning activities within the course modules. Future research on potential completion obstacles and the learner’s motivation is warranted and will help guide greater methods for knowledge translation. It is evident that MOOCs are a viable and easily accessible method for knowledge translation for the physiotherapy community. Therefore, the continued development and implementation of MOOCs is encouraged.
Implications: MOOCs offer rehabilitation professionals the opportunity to engage with continuing education material in an innovative, flexible and accessible manner; thus allowing the learner to study at their own pace while reducing financial, logistical or geographical barriers to learning.
Funding, acknowledgements: No funding was awarded for this project.
Keywords: education, virtual platform, physiotherapy
Topic: Education: continuing professional development
Did this work require ethics approval? No
Institution: N/A
Committee: N/A
Reason: addresses unique developments in continuing education
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
