Category: Physiotherapy
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My Physiopedia Plus courses on building skills for learning
In 2023 I put together a series of short courses for Physiopedia Plus, on the topic of building skills to support learning, which were published towards the end of the year. The stats (see image above) suggest that they’ve been well-received so far. Overview of all courses in the series, and here are the individual…
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Physio is a conversational AI agent to help with physical rehabilitation
Almeida, R., Sousa, H., Cunha, L. F., Guimarães, N., Campos, R., & Jorge, A. (2024). Physio: An LLM-Based Physiotherapy Advisor (arXiv:2401.01825). arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/2401.01825 Abstract “The capabilities of the most recent language models have increased the interest in integrating them into real-world applications. However, the fact that these models generate plausible, yet incorrect text poses a…
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OpenPhysio podcast: Considering the precariat
Earlier this month I finally managed to publish an episode of the OpenPhysio podcast that’s been on my to-do list for about a year. I’ve been wanting to get the journal podcast series up and running for a while but for various reasons I haven’t been able to work on it as regularly as I’d…
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How to replace a physiotherapist (or any professional, really)
Rowe, M., Nicholls, D. A., & Shaw, J. (2021). How to replace a physiotherapist: Artificial intelligence and the redistribution of expertise. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. I’m really excited to finally share this article that I’ve been working on for a couple of years with David Nicholls and Jay Shaw. I say a couple of years…
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Blended and online learning in physiotherapy education
A short video that was presented at a physiotherapy education conference in Brazil in 2018. I spend a few minutes discussing the benefits and challenges on online learning environments in a clinical learning context.
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Who is planning for the future of physiotherapy?
In the middle ages, cities could spend more than 100 years building a cathedral while at the same time believing that the apocalypse was imminent. They must’ve had a remarkable conviction that commissioning these projects would guarantee them eternal salvation. Compare this to the way we think about planning and design today where, for example,…
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My presentation for the Reimagine Education conference
Here is a summarised version of the presentation I’m giving later this morning at the Reimagine Education conference. You can download the slides here.
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Critical digital pedagogy: Initial abstract for the chapter
Update (12-02-18): You can now download the full chapter here (A critical pedagogy for online learning in physiotherapy education) and the edited collection here. This post is linked to a short series I’ll be sharing on the process of writing a book chapter for a publication by the Critical Physiotherapy Network. I’ll add links to…
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Critical digital pedagogy: Theory and practice
Update (12-02-18): You can now download the full chapter here (A critical pedagogy for online learning in physiotherapy education) and the edited collection here. This post is actually about setting up the context for a few other posts, all related to my upcoming book chapter for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. The idea I pitched for…
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Using online multimedia to teach practical skills
During 2016 I supervised an undergraduate research group in my department and we looked at the possibility of using multimedia – including video, images and text – to teach students practical skills. Traditionally, we teach these skills by having the lecturer demonstrate the technique on a model while the class watches. Students then break into small…
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IPE course project update
This post is cross-posted from the International Ethics Project site. My 4th year students have recently completed the first writing task in the IEP course pilot project. I thought I’d post a quick update on the process using screenshots to illustrate how the course is being run. We’re using a free version of WordPress which…
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How my students do case studies in clinical practice
Our students do small case studies as part of their clinical practice rotations. The basic idea is that they need to identify a problem with their own practice; something that they want to improve. They describe the problem in the context of a case study which gives them a framework to approach the problem like a research…
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Towards a competency-based curriculum in physiotherapy
I’ve been thinking about the concept of competency based education (CBE) in relation to the altPhysio series that I’m busy with. I’m drawn to the idea of CBE but am aware that there are some criticisms against it, especially from a theoretical and pedagogical perspective. This post is a short note to clarify some of my…
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altPhysio | Personal reflection on the series
As part of the altPhysio series I’ll be writing a few reflective posts where I think out loud about the process of writing the series. This is really for my own benefit of documenting the process, so you may not find it very interesting. Just saying… Over the past 2 or 3 years I’ve been…
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altPhysio | Getting rid of modules
This is the third post in a series looking at the ideas and processes we take for granted in a mainstream physiotherapy curriculum. In the first post I looked at the background behind a decision to form a new kind of physiotherapy school, and then wrote a second post questioning the assumption that there is an…
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altPhysio | Creating value
This is the second post in a series of exploring what a next-generation physiotherapy school might look like. Many of the ideas are not fully formed and some have very little evidence to support them. This is OK. Push back is welcome. Here’s the second interview. Q: Now that you’ve provided the background and context for why…
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altPhysio | Background of the school
This is the first of a series of posts on a vision for what a new school of physiotherapy might look like if it was designed from scratch; what it could be if we left behind the legacy systems that almost all new programmes are built around. I’ve written the series as an interview set in 2025, a…
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Our students succeed despite their education, not because of it
Note: Thank you to Dave Nicholls from the Critical Physiotherapy Network for his insight and comments that helped inform this post. Foucault said that the most dangerous ideas were the ones that we’re not even aware of; the ones we accept as being fundamentally true. He emphasised the need to examine our everyday practices and to critically analyse the…
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Stop complaining about the “knowledge-practice gap”
The “knowledge-practice gap” is a well known problem in health professions education and an enormous amount of time is spent complaining about how difficult it is to narrow the gap. The truth is, the knowledge-practice gap is a problem of our own making, and the name we’ve given this problem hints at the answer. We’ve set…
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Teaching physiotherapy in Kenya
A few weeks ago I visited colleagues in the Physiotherapy Department at Jomo Kenyatta University in Nairobi. I was invited as an external examiner and also to give advice on their developing MSc programme, which they are going to offer with both online and face-to-face components. This is just a short post of a few things…