Online education and evaluation tool of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences – Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The International Master in Physiotherapy is a two-year Master programme in English at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), aimed at foreign kinesiology students who already have a bachelor degree.

Experiences from an existing international programme at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences showed the differences in level of statistical knowledge between bachelor students from K.U.Leuven and bachelor students from institutions abroad. This was probably due to the great emphasis K.U.Leuven imposes on statistics and research methods in general in comparison to other institutions.

For this reason, the programme officer decided to develop a tool to test and improve the statistical knowledge of foreign students, prior to their arrival at the university. To that end, two courses on statistics were converted to an online version and integrated into Toledo , the learning platform of K.U.Leuven (consisting of Blackboard and Questionmark Perception), resulting in an online testing- and learning tool.

After an initial test the user was being redirected to the learning platform. When the user fails the test, he was being advised to review the theory of the respective chapter, when the user passes the test he can move on to the next chapter.

In general the tool received positive reactions from the different stakeholders involved. Professors in research methods at the faculty where enthusiastic towards the initiative, given their experiences with the low level of statistical knowledge of foreign students.

But of course the international students themselves are the ones who benefit most from this pilot, because they know exactly what is expected from them and they can all start at the same level of knowledge at the beginning of the Master. A fter trying out the tool, many of the foreign students indeed became aware of their need to improve their level of statistical knowledge.

A positive aspect in this respect is that the incoming students are given access to the tool after their file is approved at K.U.Leuven and when they are still at home. At this point they are not yet officially enrolled at the university. This procedure allows for students to check out their abilities to succeed in the International Master before they make their final decision to enrol.

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