How might we grow?

[Barrett Dorko]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how this site has evolved and what it’s come to mean to me and, I suspect, all of the other moderators.

The Internet bulletin boards and listservs have been freely available for a decade at this point and their usefulness for clinicians, academicians and administrators cannot be questioned. Still, my experience with the clinicians hasn’t changed appreciably during that time. When I ask who uses this resource to a group of forty I might see one hand rise, maybe two. If the person raising their hand is in the front row they might snatch it down once they’ve looked behind them. This is just another example of how the need to be normal is greater than most suspect.

Despite my effort (we’re talking about ten years of lecturing on the subject to thousands of therapists) the number of people visiting here and elsewhere has grown at a glacial pace and those actually participating not really at all – and I’m speaking in relation to what one might expect.

This abject failure to influence our community as much as we would like (or reasonably should be expected) probably has several ways of being understood.

What are they?

[Diane]

Ten years is a microsecond in the history of human pimate social grooming.

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

Well yea, I get that. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this (put in the form of a question):

If one day the therapeutic communities were offered free access to an enormous amount of information perfectly relevant to their practice - access with no strings attached and readily available to answer an infinite variety of questions immediately from the foremost experts in the field - how would they respond to such an opportunity?

The answer so far is -they'd ignore it.

[Diane]

I think we do grow - one by one. We grew when you joined, Mike...
Barrett, it might be too slow for you, but there's no way to speed up nature. Growth takes its own weird length of time.

If one day the therapeutic communities were offered free access to an enormous amount of information perfectly relevant to their practice - access with no strings attached and readily available to answer an infinite variety of questions immediately from the foremost experts in the field - how would they respond to such an opportunity?

They'll go for a very long time thinking they already know it all - after all, they've been "trained" haven't they? They'll let their "training" substitute for ongoing education for as long as it takes for the contradictions to pile up enough to actually start to bother them.

[Barrett Dorko]

Might it be that I expect therapy to grow in the manner that any scientific discipline would once some more reasonable procedure showed up? Doesn't orthopedic surgery change at a far greater pace than we do?

Maybe the "sufficiently advanced technologies" of this melding of manual care, neuroscience and cultural awareness can as yet only be perceived as magic.

Maybe therapy as a whole isn't a scientific discipline.

That would explain so much.

[Diane]

Maybe therapy as a whole isn't a scientific discipline.
That would explain so much.

Yes. It would.
It's a profession that thinks it's a science but only if the things investigated are mesodermal. Not sure, but I think that makes it a "pseudo"-science.

[BB]

I have suspected in the past that the medium itself may be limiting to a degree. If that is the case, change should be on the way. Once the kids that are now in high school, spending hours chatting and texting, using the internet regularly, find themselves as PT's, that is. So, just another decade or so away.

[bernard]

I'm rather optimistic.
We have 224 active members today and the # total is 2045.
It is quite the best ratio over internet. (>10%)
10% is an impressive number since it is known that the ratio of active members of any profession is under 5%.

[Diane]

What per cent of these 2045 are banned (spammers etc.)?
Seems to me, it's a garden. To get it to grow well, constant pruning and weeding is required, just as much as care and feeding.

[bernard]

Today there is 409 outlaws (but inactive).

[anoopbal]

I think the majority just lack that passion and cursiosity that is common to most of the regulars here. I am not a physical therapist but I am just passionately curious to learn and understand how everything works.

The situation is likewise in the fitness and strength and conditioning feild. It's just amazing to see personal trainers and strength coaches still basing their workouts on old and outdated theories and anecdotal evidence. And even more amazing when you see all the new info can be accessed by just the click of a button.

Anoop

[nari]

I agree with the conclusions Bernard came up with. I think we do very well, especially this year.
Even if we make one person per month think about another way of approaching patient care, it is a bonus.

Nari

[Sarah]

Learning Styles

From an educational psychology perspective, one also has to consider that people have different learning styles. As someone stated previously, the medium itself my be a barrier as well. From my experience, most PT's aren't internet savvy and prefer to learn in didactic and lab based CE courses, versus autodictatic learning that occurs here. To reach the widest audience, one needs to cater to all types of learning styles, so I think it's helpful that Barrett offers courses, and perhaps others will offer more in the future as well (Diane )

Sarah

[Barrett Dorko]

Sarah,

I understand about learning styles but find that I am still surprised to find that reading doesn't seem to be just about anybody's style in our business - well, almost nobody. I say this because when I speak of what we've learned that has been published it's all brand new to the class.

I've yet to see any significant evidence that listening and watching has a lot of impact either. If it was so, somebody would show up here with an observation, a question or a new idea. This almost never happens.

[Sarah]

Barrett,

You're right, reading (and actually comprehending) is not the way that most people learn unfortunately. Such is the problem with online learning in general. Traditional teaching methods have involved spoon-feeding information in little bits. People who have gotten their ideas across in the past have developed expensive and tedious courses which involve systematically broken down material, given in small doses over a long period of time (think university). And we're conditioned to think that this is the best way to learn. If something is free and simple.....it can't be worthwhile!
My tactic is, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I'm working toward becoming a professor in a professional program and incorporating more active learning techniques and critical thinking into the curriculum. I call my students "creative problem solvers". They think I'm strange but endearing (I hope) From what I've read and seen, PT programs are going this way, but very slowly.
I've also seen that people who are autodidactic have difficulty understanding that it's not so easy for other people to learn that way. Some of it is motivational, some is cognitive, but the reality is, most people are not active learners. We could get into a whole different thread about the educational system and how it fails to teach people how to think for themselves and learn, but that would be another topic altogether...

Sarah