EJEL Volume 5 Issue 4
February 2008

Face-to-face vs. Real-time Clinical Education: No Significant Difference

Y.Q. Mohammed, G. Waddington, and P. Donnan
University of Canberra, Australia

The main objective of this pilot research project was to determine whether the use of an internet broadband link to stream physiotherapy clinical education workshop proceedings in “real-time” is of equivalent educational value as the traditional face-to-face experience. This project looked at the benefits of using the above technology as an educational tool and its impact on educators only, it did not investigate possible related factors such as the cost of employing this technology nor the technicalities of setting up the proposed technology as these objectives were beyond the scope of the study. In 2006 three physiotherapy educators’ workshops were selected for streaming at the University of Canberra. Two groups of educators attended the workshops at geographically separate venues, face-to-face (on-site) and real-time internet streaming (off-site). Group one (on-site) attended face-to-face lectures at the Canberra Hospital ACT Australia; lectures were streamed using a standard personal computer and a digital camera to group two (off-site) at the University of Canberra and Calvary Hospital ACT. At the end of the workshops all participants completed the questionnaire survey. Obtained results were analyzed using t-tests. No significant difference was found between the participants’ assessment of the educational value derived from either off or on-site attendance at the workshop. Although this pilot project did not look into all aspects of the technologies available to deliver distance clinical education, it has conducted some useful statistical analysis and, as a pilot foundation for a larger and comprehensive study, delineates a potentially useful area for further exploration.

Keywords: face-to-face, real-time, educators, clinical education, interactions, internet broadband, telemedicine, videoconferencing

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