Dr. Sam Coppoletti, PT, DPT, hosts a three-part series to help PTA faculty get the most out of PhysioU. Each session covers different tools and skills for classroom, lab, and clinical education.

Featured Speaker: Sam Coppoletti, PT, DPT

Dr. Coppoletti is a veteran PTA educator with a diverse clinical and academic background. He has earned degrees from Northern Illinois University, the University of Iowa, and Shenandoah University. His career includes work as a PTA, rural hospital director, pediatric cooperative therapist, and MPT faculty at Southwest Baptist University. He also led the Shawnee State PTA Program for eight years, served a decade at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College, and directed the Hocking College PTA Program. Dr. Coppoletti has served on the Ohio PT Licensure Board, the OPTA Ethics Committee, and as a consultant to NPTE Final Frontier. He is part of an international team teaching in Cameroon’s first PT bachelor’s program and currently teaches for Lake Superior College’s PTA Military Bridge Program.

00:00 PTA Welcome Week Webinar Series

02:28 PTA App Platform Training Session

05:05 PhysioU Web Interface Demo

07:56 PTA Apps Website Organization

11:21 PhysioU Demonstration for Teaching Techniques

14:23 Electrical Stimulation Therapy Teaching Resource

16:54 PTA Resources Demonstration

19:14 PT Assistant Application Demonstration

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

How to Help First-Year PTA Students Master ROM, MMT, and Physical Agents With PhysioU

Ask any PTA educator about their biggest challenges and you will hear familiar refrains: there is never enough lab time, students struggle to practice techniques outside scheduled sessions, and the breadth of material feels overwhelming. By the time students reach clinical rotations, some of those early fundamentals have often faded. So how do you help first-year students build range of motion, manual muscle testing, and physical agents skills that last?

In Session 2 of our PTA Faculty Success Series, Dr. Sam Coppoletti, PT, DPT, PhysioU PTA Education Lead, and Dr. James Syms, a seasoned educator, walked us through the PhysioU apps built for these fundamentals, whether you are just starting with PhysioU or already using it. They also shared a simple routine for using the apps: preview, practice, and repeat. 

Closing the Learning Gap: Why Preview, Practice, and Repetition Work

The traditional approach of watching a demonstration once in class and practicing later often falls short, and the pandemic made that painfully clear. During COVID, programs scrambled to teach hands-on skills when hands-on access was severely limited, which made the usual lab time and practice challenges even more pronounced. Dr. Coppoletti’s program at Lake Superior College was one of them.

The value of these apps, however, goes well beyond crisis management, because they address how motor skills are learned and retained. Preview, practice, and repetition, done with intention, create what Dr. Syms calls sticky learning, in which information does not simply pass through a student’s mind but integrates at a neurological level and builds pathways that persist into clinical practice. That is why the webinar kept returning to routines that give students repeated, purposeful exposure to each skill.

Range of Motion and Manual Muscle Testing: Building the Foundation

The Range of Motion/MMT app serves as the cornerstone for first-year PTA education, with every measurement technique presented through structured video demonstrations that students can open before class, during lab, and when studying at home. As Dr. Tracy Moore, one of our PhysioU Education Leads, explained during the webinar, “These little pieces of intentional design are built because this is a faculty team building this for classroom learning.” That intention shows up in the structure of every page:

• Frozen frames appear before the video plays, showing patient positioning, hand placement, and landmark identification.
• Videos can be looped during lab, so you can circulate among students while the demonstration plays continuously.
• Reference information sits below each video: normal ranges, end feels, goniometer landmarks, stabilization cues, and keys to reliability.
• An “Occupation and Function” section answers the question every instructor hears midway through teaching 30 different measurements, which is when students will actually use all of this.

That last section connects shoulder flexion range of motion to driving a car, reaching overhead, or grabbing groceries from a shelf, which makes the technique immediately relevant. Students stop seeing these measurements as isolated tests to memorize and start seeing them as tools for helping real people accomplish meaningful activities. The manual muscle testing section follows the same philosophy, with each test demonstrated with attention to positioning, resistance application, and grading criteria. Alternative positions are provided where applicable and the key muscles involved are clearly identified, which gives students a comprehensive reference for assessing strength and tracking patient progress throughout their careers.

Physical Agents: From Theory to Safe Application

The Physical Agents app deals with making sure students understand how to apply modalities like ultrasound, electrical stimulation, or traction, why they are using them, and what precautions they must observe. Each modality section begins with purpose and indications, then moves through contraindications and precautions before demonstrating application. The videos show proper setup, parameter selection, and patient positioning.

Supporting materials include patient education handouts and lab guides that you can download and customize for your own classes. Dr. Coppoletti described how he structures his teaching around the app, saying “I ask them to watch before they come to class. And then we watch it during class, during the lab. And then we practice it, and then we can loop it.” This preview, practice, and review cycle keeps lab time focused on skill refinement rather than initial concept introduction. Because students arrive prepared, you can devote your expertise to correcting technique, answering questions, and building clinical reasoning.

The same pattern works across the apps and rests on a learning approach grounded in neuroscience. Students watch with the intent to perform, imagining themselves executing the technique, and they make connections to future practice before they ever touch a patient. Then they practice hands-on while the video loops, which lets them check their technique repeatedly without monopolizing your attention. This alternating pattern of observation and practice, with feedback woven throughout, creates the integration that simple memorization cannot.

Features That Support Students and Educators

PhysioU’s redesigned interface includes several features that strengthen this learning cycle. The “Quiz of the Day” adapts to where students are in the curriculum, serving questions at the body region level based on what they are currently studying. If your class is covering shoulder range of motion, for example, students start receiving questions about shoulder end feel and normal ranges, which reinforces what they are learning in real time. Bookmarking lets students flag specific techniques or reference pages to review, creating a personalized study guide that grows throughout the semester.

The same interface supports you as the educator in several ways, because it saves preparation time, helps with accreditation documentation, and works across devices. That matters when lab time is already tight and you would rather spend it refining technique than building materials. Three features stand out:

• Lab guides and handouts eliminate the need to create materials from scratch, and they align with the video content to give you structured frameworks for lab sessions and assessments.
• The “curricular standards” section maps content directly to PTA program requirements, so it is straightforward to show how the apps support accreditation criteria.
• Access across devices means students can pull up PhysioU on a phone during a study session at home or reference it on a tablet during lab practice.

These apps also follow students well beyond the first year. They carry from first-year fundamentals through clinical rotations and board exam preparation, and then into professional practice as a continuum of reference and learning. Students can return to them whenever they need to refresh a technique or verify a measurement.

Starting Small and Building Momentum

The one moment that has stayed with us from the webinar is Dr. Coppoletti’s account of his own program during COVID, when students at Lake Superior College could not really get to lab. He reflected, “PhysioU saved [us] during COVID,” describing how students practiced at home in PhysioU and then came in for boot camp weeks at the end of a course. That experience shows what these apps can do under pressure, but Dr. Coppoletti’s advice for programs just beginning with PhysioU is far simpler: start small and build from there.

He suggests choosing one app that aligns with what you are teaching in the current term and using it consistently. Starting with a single app keeps the change manageable for you and for your students. That can look like this:

• Have students preview content before lab.
• Reference the app during practice.
• Return to it when studying.

As students and faculty become comfortable with that workflow, you can layer in additional apps and features, such as the Physical Agents and Palpation apps alongside the Range of Motion/MMT app. The patient education handouts and lab guides shared in the webinar are good places to start, since they align with the video content and can be customized for your classes. The goal is not to overhaul your curriculum overnight but to give students tools that make learning foundational skills more efficient, more effective, and more durable. When you can spend your precious lab time on skill refinement and clinical reasoning instead of basic content delivery, everyone benefits.

Watch the full recording to see the apps and teaching routine in action, claim Complimentary Educator access to explore PhysioU yourself, or set up a demo with our PhysioU PTA Education Lead to plan where to start in your program. Choosing one app for this term is enough to begin.