What Kind and How Many?: Exploring Feedback in Remote Training of Procedural Skills in Physiotherapy

Abstract

Practical learning in physiotherapy education became challenging during the pandemic. Socio-sanitary constraints limited hands-on scenarios and instructors’ opportunities to provide timely feedback to their students. Asynchronous remote training through a feedback-oriented platform is an alternative with potential benefits beyond emergency distance learning. This preliminary quantitative study analyzes the results of the implementation of an asynchronous remote strategy for teaching manual techniques to Physiotherapy undergraduate students. Sixty-one students reviewed a procedure video, recorded their execution of the procedure, and uploaded it to an online platform. An instructor assessed the video through an observation scale, providing students with different feedback inputs. Students repeated the process if they did not meet the cut-off score. In the development of two procedural skills, the results showed that students with lower performance received more feedback, especially in the form of “common mistakes videos”. Finally, instructors showed significant differences in the number of feedback inputs assigned to students with the same performance. This strategy allowed students to train in practical skills remotely, receiving feedback in a specific and unique way. While feedback in different formats was valued, we believe that further research is needed on feedback content and its impact on learning beyond just quantity and format.