Training and Supporting Faculty Members to Coach Doctor of Physical Therapy Students

As the Director of Student Affairs for a developing two-year hybrid Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program, I was tasked with developing a program to support the academic success of students. Limited evidence was available on supporting students who were geographically separated from campus during most of their preparation because hybrid programs only recently emerged. Academic coaching has been used in medical education and recently in hybrid DPT programs to support students’ academic and professional development. Coaching differs from advising and mentoring because it was focused on building relationships between students and coaches to promote students’ self-reflection, growth, persistence, and agency. I used asynchronous instructional videos, in-person workshops, and an online community of practice to train and support faculty members to serve as coaches. Coach training focused on specific coaching concepts including listening empathetically, asking powerful questions, and adhering to a coaching session structure. At orientation, faculty member coaches (FMCs) met with their 8-10 students in a group setting and also 1:1 to build rapport and establish communication. Subsequently, FMCs engaged each student in a coaching session twice, during the midterm of each of the first two academic terms of the program. In this mixed methods study, I employed quantitative survey and qualitative interview methods to evaluate faculty members’ attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy for serving as a coach as well as their relatedness to students. Additionally, I explored students’ perceptions of coach support, relatedness to their coach, and relatedness to peers. FMCs demonstrated increases in attitudes, perceived skills, and self-efficacy for the key coaching concepts because of the training. They rated their relatedness to students high and reported that building connections with students was a rewarding aspect of coaching. Similarly, students rated their coach and peers highly with respect to relatedness and had positive perspectives toward coaches’ support. FMCs were challenged by the time commitment to the coaching process. Moreover, students yearned for more opportunities to connect with their coach and peers. In the discussion, I highlighted the complementarity of the quantitative and qualitative outcomes, connected the findings to theoretical perspectives, and proposed implications for practice and for future research.