See how faculty can use PhysioU’s five neuro apps to build a connected learning experience across the curriculum. Sara Kraft, PT, DPT, EdD, NCS and Charlotte Chatto, PT, PhD, NCS share practical teaching strategies, classroom examples, and lessons learned from incorporating NeuroAnatomy, NeuroExam, NeuroRehab, Neurologic Case Studies, and Neuro Simulations into their courses.

Featured Speaker:  Charlotte Chatto, PT, PhD, NCS 

Dr. Chatto has 35 years of physical therapy experience across acute and critical care, inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient, and home health settings for both adults and pediatrics. She is a Board Certified Clinical Specialist in Neurologic Physical Therapy. With 27 years of academic experience, she holds Emerita status at Augusta University since 2021 and was one of the founding faculty for the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at The University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky. Dr. Chatto has received multiple honors, including Outstanding Faculty, Distinguished Service, and Outstanding Clinical Educator awards. She has also been selected as a Teaching Scholar Fellow, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellow, and Faculty Development Fellow, and participated in the Harvard-Macy Institute for Educators. For the past decade, she has volunteered in Haiti with Global Therapy Group clinic, teaches neuroscience and research at Faculté des Sciences de Réhabilitation de Léogâne (FSRL) at Université Épiscopale d’Haiti (UNEPH).

Featured Speaker:  Sara Kraft, PT, DPT, EdD, NCS 

Sara V. Kraft, PT, DPT, NCS, is a distinguished leader in the field of physical therapy, with a career spanning nearly three decades. As a professor and the residential director of the Division of Physical Therapy in the College of Health Professions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), she has demonstrated exceptional leadership in both academic and clinical settings. Dr. Kraft teaches the neuromuscular course series for Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students, leveraging her extensive expertise as a board-certified neurological specialist and former board-certified assistive technology professional.

Dr. Kraft exemplifies strong leadership through her role as a co-founding director of the MUSC Neurological Residency, where she has played a key role in shaping the program. Additionally, she served as chair of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Residency/Fellowship Education Special Interest Group. Her commitment to advancing the profession through education and mentorship is further demonstrated by her four years as a board member of the APTA Academy of Education.

Dr. Kraft received her Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy, Master of Science in Health Sciences, and Doctor of Physical Therapy from MUSC. She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Education (EdD) in Educational Leadership at Capella University, underscoring her dedication to continuous growth and development as a leader. Her diverse experience as a clinician, manager, and educator across various settings highlights her ability to inspire and guide others in the field of physical therapy.

00:00 How Faculty Use PhysioU’s Neuro Apps Across the Curriculum

04:24 Neuro Teaching Challenges Discussion

06:53 PhysioU Neuro Apps Presentation

19:16 Neuromuscular Teaching with PhysioU Apps

37:11 PTA Simulation System Demonstration

43:19 Wrap Up & Closing Comments

Helpful Links: Complimentary Educator access | Educator resources | Set up a Demo

How to Build a Connected Neuro Curriculum with PhysioU’s Five Neuro Apps

How do you teach students to recognize ataxia when most of them have never seen a patient with it? Neurologic content is among the more challenging parts of physical therapy education. Students must master complex neuroanatomy, build sharp observational skills, and develop clinical reasoning, all before they have had exposure to real patients with neurologic conditions.

Sara Kraft, PT, DPT, EdD, NCS, Professor and Residential Program Director at the Medical University of South Carolina, and Charlotte Chatto, PT, PhD, NCS, our Neuroscience Education Lead, joined our webinar to show how PhysioU’s five neuro apps can build graded exposure across a curriculum, whether you teach PT or PTA students. They shared teaching strategies and classroom examples that move students from foundational knowledge to confident clinical application. The good news is that these strategies are immediately actionable!

Video Before Lab: Priming Students for Motor Learning

Peer reviewed evidence supports asking students to watch demonstration videos before lab. When students watch someone perform a clinical skill, their mirror neurons fire in patterns that overlap significantly with the neurons that activate when they perform that skill themselves, and, as Dr. Chatto explained, “Just like our neuro patients are motor learning, our students are motor learning.” The catch is that students need to watch with intention, actively imagining themselves performing the movements instead of passively consuming content. Used that way, video before hands-on practice can make the motor learning in lab more efficient, which is the same principle clinicians apply when they use motor imagery and mental practice with patients.

Dr. Kraft builds on that idea in how she teaches neurological examination skills, using three learning opportunities that each build on the last, much like graded exposure in patient rehabilitation. The first two happen before students ever practice on each other, which is what makes the lab time count. Her sequence looks like this:

• Pre-class video preparation in NeuroExam. Before class on sensory testing or spasticity assessment, students watch focused demonstrations of hand placement, patient positioning, and what to say. They can pause, rewind, and review as often as they need in a low-stakes setting.
• Asynchronous application in Neuro Simulations. After the class introduction but before hands-on practice, students work through interactive simulations that show the same tests performed on patients, with embedded questions that ask them to interpret findings and consider functional implications.
• In-person lab practice. When students practice on each other, they are not engaging with the skill for the first time, so the cognitive load has been spread across multiple exposures.

The middle step adds the context students are missing, and Dr. Kraft noted that “If we can give [students] a context and a picture of what things look like, especially in a population that they’re not all that familiar with… context goes an awful long way for learning.” Those embedded questions in Neuro Simulations help students start connecting objective measurements to real-world movement problems. By the time they reach the lab, their brains have been primed, they have seen the skill performed correctly, and they have already thought through clinical applications.

Video Case Studies: Giving Students Eyes to See

Observation is the next challenge, and Dr. Kraft was candid about it, explaining that “Most of our students haven’t seen a lot of people with neurological disorders, and so they have no idea what ataxia looks like… ” Neurologic Case Studies and NeuroRehab give faculty extensive video libraries of real patients organized by diagnosis, impairment, and outcome measure. Students can watch actual gait patterns and movement compensations and start training their eyes to identify abnormalities before they see their first clinical patient.

Dr. Kraft walked us through an example of a patient with a C5 incomplete spinal cord injury performing the timed up and go test, first with a rolling walker and then with a single-point cane. Students watch the same test with each device, and the videos spark rich discussion. Her prompts ask students to work through four things:

• Which device appears more functional?
• Which specific gait deviations can they observe?
• Which examination findings might explain those movement patterns?
• Which interventions would they prioritize?

From there, faculty can move into the NeuroRehab intervention library, where harness-supported gait training or treadmill-facilitated walking shows how you might address the motor control deficits students just observed. The progression moves from observation to examination to intervention, which keeps the clinical reasoning visual and practical. Video can also make intervention dosing visible, and Dr. Kraft shared three videos of a patient with cerebellar ataxia practicing stepping accuracy with target practice:

• With a single-point cane, the patient’s attention is consumed by balance demands and he cannot focus on stepping accuracy, so the dose is clearly too challenging.
• With two walking poles, he does better, but the dose is still not quite right.
• In the parallel bars, increased stability lets him work on the motor control the activity was designed to address.

Because the three videos show the same activity at different support levels, the comparison is easy to see. Sequential videos like these give students a framework for clinical reasoning that lectures alone cannot, because they can see what an appropriately dosed activity looks like compared with one that is too easy or too challenging. Students can then apply the same thinking to progression, such as where to go from parallel bars and what the next step should be before returning to a single-point cane.

Threading the Five Neuro Apps Through the Curriculum

Those strategies fit into a larger picture, because PhysioU’s five neuro apps (NeuroAnatomy, NeuroExam, Neurologic Case Studies, NeuroRehab, and Neuro Simulations) can be woven through an entire curriculum, from foundational anatomy courses through clinical rotations and even into board preparation. Dr. Chatto shared her own progression as one model. In an introductory module during first-semester anatomy, she uses the gamified quizzes in “Neuroanatomy Explorer” for low-stakes foundational learning, and she then revisits the content more deeply in a dedicated neuroscience course using the “Learn by Slice” and “Learn by Tract” features.

The NeuroAnatomy worksheets in the “teaching content” section guide students through higher-order thinking about spinal cord tracts, so they understand the functional significance of the pathways instead of only memorizing them. Later, in practice-based courses, students can return to the same NeuroAnatomy resources to connect the signs and symptoms in case studies to underlying neural structures. That kind of spiraling, where foundational knowledge is repeatedly accessed and applied in increasingly complex contexts, is what creates durable learning.

PTA Programs: Neuro Simulations Built for Scope of Practice

PTA faculty have their own features to look for in PhysioU, which Sam Coppoletti, PT, DPT, our PTA Education Lead, highlighted during the webinar. To see the PTA-specific versions of the content in Neuro Simulations, faculty adjust their profile settings to “PT Assistant” instead of “PT.” The MiniSIMS and MacroSIMS are adapted to align with PTA scope of practice and CAPTE standards, so they focus on appropriate skills while helping students understand how to work within a plan of care established by the PT.

Dr. Coppoletti pointed to outcome measures such as the 5x sit-to-stand, the 10-meter walk test, and the timed up and go. The MacroSIMS add comprehensive scenarios with patient history, demographics, and follow-up visits, all scored and ready to assign through a learning management system.

Making It Real on Monday Morning

The idea that has stayed with us most from the webinar is the connection between how we teach students and how we treat patients. The principles of neuroplasticity that guide effective rehabilitation (graded exposure, distributed practice, immediate feedback, motor imagery, and repetition with variation) are the same principles that make learning effective for students. That means every video, simulation, and worksheet you add also models the evidence-based thinking you want your students to bring to their future patients.

The good news is that you can start with one app in one course. Dr. Kraft and Dr. Chatto offered several tactics that are ready to use right away, including the NeuroAnatomy worksheets and corresponding answer keys. Five suggestions to integrate these apps across your curriculum include:

• Assign the NeuroAnatomy worksheets as pre-class work on spinal cord tracts, and post the answer keys after submission so students can identify their own learning gaps.
• Require specific NeuroExam videos before labs on sensory testing, tone assessment, or balance examination, so students arrive prepared instead of confused.
• Build discussion prompts around Neurologic Case Studies videos, asking students to identify gait deviations, hypothesize underlying impairments, and justify examination priorities before they touch a patient.
• Create intervention progression discussions with sequential videos that show the same activity at different support levels, which makes dosing decisions concrete and visual.
• Use Neuro Simulations as bridges between units, so the interactive decision-making consolidates learning from multiple content areas.

Watch the full recording above to hear the complete discussion, then claim Complimentary Educator access to explore PhysioU’s neuro apps for yourself. If you would like to talk through how they could fit your course structure, you can also set up a demo with our Neuroscience Education Lead.