UC programs adjust to a pandemic environment

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak changed the delivery of education when it forced in-person learning at the University of Cincinnati to shut down in mid-March of 2020. Colleges at UC had to quickly scramble to reimagine how to teach their students in an unprecedented environment.

Leadership at the College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS) immediately began the complicated process of designing learning plans that would meet the needs of their various departments.

“The university was able to give us a couple of days heads up before things were going to be shut down. This was invaluable to us,” says Chalee Engelhard, EdD, director of the physical therapy program in CAHS. “Programs worked diligently to get as many ‘psychomotor touch points’ with the students completed prior to the cutoff date as possible. As the rest of the term marched on into April, there were a lot of video assessments. For example, a video would be taken of a student taking a lower extremity through a particular range of movement and then the student would submit it to the instructor for grading.”

As the spring 2020 semester ended, plans began on what the summer and fall terms and beyond would look like. Engelhard says at the end of April, Chris Lewis, MD, the UC vice provost for academic programs and associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the UC College of Medicine, pulled together a work group designed to enable students to return to clinic.

The faculty quickly recognized they needed to have in-person contact with the students to review their hands-on skills and to build the students' confidence. “After getting through many levels of approval, including the provost’s office, we ran a two-day boot camp at the end of June and another in August,” says Engelhard.

Each boot camp consisted of around 30 students placed in two to three groups, which were socially distanced throughout the lab.

“This workshop provided me with the time to practice and reinforce hands-on skills before going into the clinic,” says Holly Lochtefeld, a second-year graduate physical therapy student who attended the June boot camp.

“When we shifted to online learning in March, we began practicing hands-on skills in our homes on our loved ones, roommates or anything that could resemble a person,” Lochtefeld says. “This presented us with challenges as we no longer were given direct feedback from peers and faculty. As a result, the boot camp provided time for students to reconnect with professors to confirm our techniques and ask questions prior to venturing into the clinic and treating patients.

“The transition to online learning has now made me fully embrace every second of in-person teaching we have available because this time is now a priceless piece of my education.”  

Engelhard gives much of the credit for the success of the transition to virtual instruction to Tina Whalen, EdD, dean of CAHS. She established a policy of faculty and staff staying away from campus unless absolutely necessary. Only 13% of the CAHS courses being offered in the fall required being on campus. The level of coordination among faculty running labs goes as deep as instructors timing the release of their classes so that not too many students are in the hallways of the Health Sciences Building at once.

“I feel that the students have learned what they needed,” says Engelhard. “In physical therapy, we were able to appropriately rearrange our courses so that the students could achieve the competencies they needed to be successful where they were in the learning process and to successfully return to a clinic setting when the time came. Our goals [with the students] are to have them graduate on time, that they will learn the breadth and depth of experiences to make them a successful PT and that they will have the tools to pass the licensing exam on the first try.”

From her perspective as a student, Lochtefeld says the college stepped up and made a seamless transition to a virtual learning environment.

“Our faculty constantly push us to speak and act with ‘patient-first language.’ This means the patient is always first in our words, in our thoughts and, most importantly, in our actions,” she says. “I believe the PT faculty are living this student-first mentality during this pandemic. I always feel like the staff know us as individuals and will strive to put the students first in order for us to earn our degree and soar as future physical therapists.”

Featured image at top: Students work at the boot camp held at the Health Sciences Building in August 2020. Photo/Colleen Kelley/UC Creative + Brand