Can you tell us a little more about your recent CFE Grant, "Classroom Without Walls: Investigating learning in students, faculty, and participants during a community engaged mobility screening?"
Erin: The project we are working on is part of a larger initiative that developed from faculty discussing things we could do to engage students post-pandemic. From that discussion, we wanted to look at ways to engage our students with the community, but for a lot of faculty, community engagement, service learning, or even just getting students out of the classroom to learn have a lot of barriers and many don’t know where even to start. What came out of these discussions was the idea of the Engaged Department to create a structure and framework of community engagement by having a core set of community partners that we work with and incorporate our work with them across all the different courses within the PT program and eventually within the HHFRS department. The structure would include how to set up initial meetings, what information you need, and how you link it to the class. This framework would have that internal component of helping faculty integrate community service and learning within their classes and the program curriculum while building connections and relationships with our community partners.
Erin: We also have this focus on research and want to create community-based participatory research by allowing the participants we screen can opt into having their data longitudinally tracked over time, which can be a part of faculty’s scholarship and help generate really meaningful research across patient care, teaching, and education.
Who are you collaborating with?
Erin: The Engaged Department started with a core team of myself and Drs. Keith Cole, Jason Dring, and Karen Goodman. Within that core team, we piloted this idea last year with a single community partner, the Foggy Bottom West End Village, whom we have worked with for decades. They came to us very eager to work with us to have more screens for members about their strength, balance, overall wellness, and mobility, so it was a great opportunity to partner with the Village and apply this framework.
Erin: Our students are able to administer their first mobility screen in their first semester within the Foundations of Examination course, which this year is taught by our newest faculty and member of the Engaged Department, Rebecca Pinkus. Then in the second semester, within our teaching and learning course, students work again with the village by developing educational materials using the principles of teaching and learning. In the summer, students can work with the villages in our service-learning course. Lastly, by the second year, they will do another mobility screen at a higher level by doing the screen, getting the results, and providing education to the participants.
What is the goal of the study?
Erin: The overall goal and hope of having these multiple touch points within the program is to get students to understand who the community is, what their needs are, and how they are creating value. We also hope that this framework benefits our community partners by receiving care on a regular basis.
Erin: We as a group believe that community engagement is beneficial; however, we want to really investigate how and why it is beneficial for all stakeholders Our study, which we have received funding from the CFE to do, is trying to identify exactly what that benefit is to all the different participants. What did they gain from participating in this? What are they actually learning? This will also serve as a gap analysis.
What are your proposed methodologies? Where are you in your project?
Erin: We are using a mixed-method approach, including quantitative and qualitative methods. Each stakeholder has a survey designed to capture their learning and experience. We have focus groups and surveys being disseminated to both cohorts. So this includes our first-year students, who are very new to the program, and our second-year students, who are wrapping up their management courses and about to go to the clinic full-time. Incorporated into this is reviewing course feedback and students' reflection papers on their experiences. In addition to the students, we also want to examine the impact on the faculty. The faculty piece will allow us to understand more about how this framework is received by faculty, what barriers might still exist in community learning, and how this impacts faculty's teaching strategies and style.
Erin: The initial screen will be in early November, so we are currently just laying the foundation and are going to focus on this year's data to start.
