Tracking Student Progress across the Doctor of Physical Therapy Curriculum
Purpose: The purpose of this platform is to introduce a tracking process that monitors doctor of physical therapy students’ progress across all three domains in the entry-level curriculum while simultaneously maintaining ethics and student privacy.
Description: Monitoring students’ progress across the entry-level curriculum serves several purposes: to ensure successful progression through the curriculum; to provide support to students who are not progressing successfully; to develop remediation plans for students that are trending below expectations; and to institute disciplinary action for performance issues.
The faculty believe that discussing student performance during faculty meetings is detrimental in the following ways: discussions can sometimes be based on personal opinion or perception, versus factual; data presented is often incomplete; there is potential for biasing faculty members about a particular student; and there is potential for biasing decisions on interpersonal factors.
In place of faculty meeting discussions, an Academic Progress Committee (APC) was tasked with performing full file reviews of all students at the end of each semester. Performing a full file review was a time-consuming process that required conversing with multiple faculty members. Attempts to gain a comprehensive record of a student’s performance were met with incomplete data. Thus, the APC developed two formal processes to track student performance: a comprehensive tracking spreadsheet and a full file review template.
The tracking spreadsheet includes all assessments across the curriculum. In the cognitive domain, exams, quizzes, and high weighted assignments are recorded as pass, fail, or marginal. In the psychomotor domain, skills checks and lab practicals are recorded as pass, fail, or marginal. In the affective domain, all low weighted assignments are recorded as pass or fail, low-quality or late submissions are flagged, and professional behaviors concerns are tracked. This spreadsheet is fast and easy for faculty to use. The APC can easily input data from the spreadsheet into the full file review template and feel confident in the accuracy and thoroughness of the student record, thereby facilitating a quick file review that is ethically based on evidence.
Summary of Use: For this platform, the comprehensive tracking spreadsheet will be displayed and associated processes discussed. The presenters will illustrate the difference in quantity and quality of data prior to versus following the institution of the comprehensive tracking spreadsheet. The presenters will demonstrate use of the full file review template in conjunction with the spreadsheet.
Importance to Members: This platform is designed to inspire faculty to base student-progress decisions on reliable and thorough evidence. When a mechanism is developed to record this data in an accurate and comprehensive manner, the need to discuss individual students at faculty meetings is diminished. This saves the faculty time and also preserves student rights and dignity.