Fiona Barrett – Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy
September 2025 marks an exciting milestone in Physiotherapy, the first cohort to start the BSc Physiotherapy and Integrated Degree Apprenticeship at UON. To support apprenticeship students transitioning into higher education, we developed a brand-new resource – Preparing for your Physiotherapy Apprenticeship Programme (PREP-PAP). PREP PAP is designed to provide apprenticeship students with key skills and professional insights before transitioning onto the course.
The PREP-PAP project is a collaboration between the Physiotherapy team, the Learning Development team and the Learning Technology team. Back in March 2025, I began to start working to support apprenticeship admissions in the physiotherapy course and set up initial meetings with the Learning Development team. We had a broad remit to deliver the apprenticeship resource including 5 elements across academic study skills and 2 across Physiotherapy (see below).
Academic Study Skills Content
- Prioritisation and time management
- Digital Study Skills
- Reading, Listening and Note-taking
- How to read an academic paper
- Using AI in Higher Education
Physiotherapy Content
- The role of the Physiotherapist and Professional Standards
- Introduction to Anatomy
As a team, we then had the difficult task of identifying a platform for the resource to be housed which ultimately would determine how we would present the resource and the 7 separate elements. We were kindly supported by the Learning Technology team staff. The Learning Technology Manager Rob Farmer and the H5P lead, Anne Misselbrook. Several conversations later, we settled on a university website hosting H5P content.
Anna and I then began the task of identifying the content to be included within each H5P workbook. This was a somewhat challenging task as we needed to ensure that all resources were accessible and delivered to the appropriate level for apprenticeship students. Topics related to the physiotherapy profession alongside an introduction to each main speciality were identified and work began in earnest to complete! There were regular meetings to align resources within the team and ensure we were on track to achieve our completion date of June 2025.
The development of the resource felt like an exciting and challenging opportunity. It facilitated engagement with various teams and served as a networking opportunity for me and to set the seeds for future collaboration projects. Anna and I had completed the resource by June and our final task was to record an introductory video to welcome students to the resource. After many takes, we had produced a welcome video alongside 7 bespoke resources which I was proud to share with the students in July 2025.
PREP-PAP is now live and has been shared with all apprenticeship students. We are eager to hear students feedback and how it has supported their journey into higher education. We will use this feedback to refine and strengthen the offering to future students. This project has been both a challenge and a joy to undertake and I’m excited to continue working on this project for future cohorts.
Anna Smith – Learning Development Tutor and Mentor
Through my role as Learning Development Tutor at the University of Northampton, I am aware of the challenges many of our Apprentice students face, entering or re-entering Higher Education, and balancing their job and family life with the demanding requirements of their studies. I was keen to contribute to a resource to support this transition, working collaboratively with Fiona Barrett in Physiotherapy and Anne Misselbrook in Learning Technology.
Fiona and I met at the start of the project to clarify what we wanted to offer through the resource and how we wanted it to be presented. We felt the Apprentices needed a basic introduction to the course content and key study skills to support them with their transition. We wanted the resource to be engaging and relevant. After advice from Learning Technology and Digital Skills, we agreed to provide links to H5P Interactive Workbooks on an open website that the Apprentices could easily access.
Before starting this project, my experience of using H5P was limited. I had completed training, led by Anne, early in 2024; however, I had only produced a small number of H5P quizzes since. Anne gave me a one-to-one H5P refresher session, which was useful, enabling me to begin creating my first H5P workbook. Following this, Anne and I met regularly for her to feedback on the workbooks and for me to troubleshoot areas I was struggling with. By sharing our screens and testing parts of the H5P together, I was able to build the skills to develop the workbooks independently.
Over the next six weeks, I developed three one-hour H5P interactive workbooks covering Prioritisation and Time Management, Reading, Listening and Notetaking, and Using Academic Sources. Within these workbooks, I embedded videos from Kaltura, created multiple-choice quizzes, designed drag-and-drop activities, inserted images from Pixabay, and provided areas for students to write responses to scenarios. I ensured all content had a physiotherapy focus, relevant to the Apprentices. The resource created was peer-reviewed by Anne as well as my Learning Development team, and I adapted the H5Ps accordingly to ensure it met all accessibility requirements.
Fiona and I created a welcome video for the website, instructing students on how to use the H5P Workbooks and providing links to other relevant resources. I have enjoyed this collaborative project and found the process to be extremely informative, developing my digital skills in many ways. I am looking forward to the next phase of the project, in which we hope to gain feedback from the Apprentices around their engagement with the resource.
Take a look at the resource here at Physiotherapy Degree Apprenticeship BSc (Hons) preparation | UON
