An experience with cooperative learning in the course of general physiotherapy, a compulsory course of the Graduation in Physiotherapy at University of Vigo

Abstract

Colaborative learning is a methodology that promotes better communication as well as a marked increase in a variety of thinking strategies among members in a group. It refers to a set of instructional strategies in which students work together in small groups to complete tasks or a project in a specific period of time and help each other to learn a specific content. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of a cooperative learning activity to develop the subject of Hydrotherapy techniques, included in the course of General Physiotherapy. 37 students of the second year of Physiotherapy Degree participated in the study, but only 29 students had returned the evaluation questionnaire. Some aspects evaluated were the capacity of the students in worrying about the level of comprehension of their colleagues, their capacity of extracting the relevant information from different scientific sources and their fluency in explaining the subject studied to their colleagues, among others. Every aspect was evaluated using a five-point likert scale. We could conclude that the introduction of this not new methodology is well accepted by the students, and that it contributes to the students’ capacity in summarizing the relevant information. We also could conclude that the timeline proposed (2 hours session) was not sufficient to develop their oratory skills and that most of the participants could not be worried about helping their colleagues in learning the subject proposed. Our physiotherapy students are not used to this methodology and, maybe, it should be interesting, in future studies, to evaluate the introduction of this methodology, using a larger timeline, and maybe including all the subject of the course and thus to generate a probably worrying in the colleagues real comprehension of the course.