How did physical therapy students feel about the lecture on motion analysis that invited graduates as guest speakers?

Abstract

The skill of motion analysis is very difficult for physical therapy students and educators to learn and teach it, respectively. At the author’s university, we invited graduates as guest speakers for a lecture on motion analysis. The purpose of this study was to analyze the results of a questionnaire conducted between 2016-2019 and discuss their usefulness of these lectures on studying motion analysis. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 169 third-year students, and they were asked to indicate their level of understanding and satisfaction from a list of six items using a visual analogue scale; 1) the skill to “describe the phenomenon” was enhanced, 2) the skill to “think of problems from the phenomenon” was enhanced, 3) the skills to “integrate and interpret problems” was enhanced, 4) the whole lecture was difficult, 5) the whole lecture was enjoyable, and 6) inviting graduates as guest speakers was meaningful. In terms of understanding how to use the clinical thinking process, which was the aim of this study, the scores of items 1 and 2 were good. The results of the correlation analyses showed significant differences: strong correlations were found between items 1 and 2 and 2 and 3, moderate or greater correlations between items 1 and 3 and 4 and 5, and weak to moderate correlation between item 6 and all the items. Based on the results of our study, we conclude that this program should be continued and even modified to increase its value among students.