A snapshot of placement activities and learning outcomes assessed through logbook submission for clinical exercise physiology students

Introduction: Student professional placement is integral to authentic student learning. A common requirement of the professional placement experience is for students to log details of their day-to-day activities, including a description of the clients and the knowledge and skills applied. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research investigating the specific activities that students undertake during clinical exercise physiology placement and whether completing logbooks provides assurance that learning outcomes have been achieved.

Methods: The purpose of this research project was to capture the skills and experiences that students report (via logbooks) being exposed to during their clinical professional placement for clinical exercise physiology and to compare these to the intended learning outcomes.

Results: Students tended to undertake 1-hour client sessions with clients 60–69 years of age. Osteoarthritis, general pain, hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, mood affective disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders were the most common conditions seen during placement. Student skills involved predominately resistance and cardio prescription and assessment.

Conclusions: The snapshot analysis of experiences logged by students, although time consuming, provided an evaluation of student learning during placement. Now, with online, real-time data collection available, this type of analysis will be efficient and will provide evidence for learning outcome curriculum improvements.