The Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences recently hosted 75 faculty members from across the country for an interactive workshop on how to design curricula and create meaningful educational experiences for physical therapy students.
The Faculty Development Workshop, held July 12 to 15, was intended to foster career development for full-time faculty who are within their first four years of teaching in a physical therapy program. Many of the workshop’s courses were led by Feinberg faculty members.
“The faculty at Feinberg take seriously the responsibility to prepare the next generation of physical therapists to pursue excellence — and one way we accomplish that is through good teaching,” said Alice Salzman, PT, EdD, assistant professor of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences (PTHMS). “We work hard to prepare effective learning opportunities for the students. We also take seriously the responsibility to learn and grow as faculty, and to prepare the next generation of physical therapist faculty.”
Salzman, who organized the workshop, is also a representative-at-large for professional development at the Academy of Physical Therapy Education (APTE) of the American Physical Therapy Association, which sponsored the workshop.
On Friday afternoon, conference participants gathered for an interactive course led by Salzman and William Healey, ’93 PT, EdD, assistant professor of PTHMS, who are both members of the Feinberg Academy of Medical Educators (FAME).
In the course, Salzman and Healey provided an overview of team-based learning (TBL) — an active teaching strategy where students learn material in advance and use class time to work in small teams to apply concepts — and shared how TBL is implemented at Feinberg.
“It’s a flipped-classroom approach, where a lot of what would be learned in a traditional lecture is now done outside of class,” explained Healey, a recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award from the American Physical Therapy Association.
Healey and Salzman used the TBL format to then divide participants into small teams, where the groups worked together to apply learning and teaching concepts and construct their own TBL modules.
Throughout the four-day workshop, participants also attended networking events, as well as a range of classes on topics from strategies for assessing students to publishing research.
Other Feinberg faculty members who served as instructors during the workshop included Marjorie Hilliard, PT, EdD, associate chair for Professional Education in the Department of PTHMS; Karen Hayes, ’66 PT, ’91 PhD, associate professor emeritus of PTHMS; Lois Hedman, PT, ’87 MS, DScPT, associate professor of PTHMS; and Heather Henderson, DPT, assistant professor of PTHMS.
