After nearly a decade working at the intersection of physiotherapy and online education, Tarina van der Stockt has a clear view of what makes continuing education genuinely effective, and what holds it back. Here she shares what that looks like in practice, and what changes when AI enters the equation.
When the first Physiopedia MOOCs launched in 2013, what physiotherapists responded to most wasn’t the content itself. It was the sense that learning could be genuinely global and connected, that a clinician in one country could engage with perspectives and case studies from colleagues all over the world. That response shaped how we think about continuing education.
As a team, we spend a great deal of time asking one central question: what does excellent online physiotherapy continuing education actually look like? Not just good content, although that matters enormously, but a genuinely effective learning experience that changes how clinicians think and practice.
Our answer centres on three things. It has to be grounded in the best available evidence. It has to be designed for the way clinicians actually learn. And it has to bridge the gap between knowing something and confidently applying it in practice.
Those principles are what drive every Plus course we develop. Our 800+ internationally accredited courses are built by expert clinicians, peer reviewed and designed with instructional rigour from the ground up. But even the most carefully crafted course has an inherent limitation. It can deliver knowledge, but it cannot easily replicate the kind of thinking that happens in a tutorial room, a clinical supervision session or a conversation with a knowledgeable colleague. The passive consumption of content, however excellent, only goes so far.
Closing that gap has been one of our biggest educational challenges. And it is precisely where the integration of PAI, the Physiopedia AI Assistant, into Plus courses has made such a difference. In 2025, we became the first physiotherapy online learning platform to embed AI-supported learning activities directly into our courses, and the response from learners has been extraordinary.
The PAI learning activities are 10- to 15-minute interactive sessions woven into courses at the point where application matters most. Rather than passively receiving information, learners enter into a clinical dialogue with PAI, working through realistic scenarios and complex case-based reasoning. PAI challenges assumptions, asks follow-up questions, surfaces considerations the learner may not have thought of, and provides structured feedback throughout. A physical therapist from the United States described it perfectly: “It feels like you’re genuinely talking with someone who guides you to explore and deepen your thinking in ways you might not have considered on your own.”
Alongside the learning activities, every Plus course now includes PAI knowledge checks. These are not standard multiple-choice assessments. They are dynamic, adaptive evaluations built around four carefully crafted questions with personalised follow-up, immediate feedback and additional practice where needed. Learners consistently tell us that the knowledge checks are among the highlights of their course experience, which speaks volumes about how much the format matters in assessment. A physiotherapist from Malaysia said “I think the PAI Knowledge Checks are a really fun and engaging way to test what I’ve learned.”
What makes all of this possible is the knowledge base underpinning every PAI interaction. PAI draws exclusively from Physiopedia’s evidence-based content and the full Plus course library, meaning that every learning activity is clinically grounded, traceable and built on material created and quality-assured by physiotherapy professionals. Learners are not engaging with a general-purpose AI that has been loosely pointed at healthcare topics. They are learning with an AI built from the ground up for the physiotherapy profession, and that distinction shows in every interaction.. Technology that serves the learning, not the other way around.
I completed the case study PAI activity in my course and I’m honestly impressed with the results. The use of PAI really enhances the depth and application of the course material by a huge margin. It’s exciting to see how AI can add such value to student learning, and I’m looking forward to experiencing more of these innovations in coursework. Super impressed and well done for rolling this out! – Marissa Fourie, Plus Course Instructor.
The integration of PAI into Plus courses represents a genuine step forward in online physiotherapy education. For clinicians anywhere in the world, that kind of personalised, dialogue-based learning no longer requires a tutorial room or a supervision session. It is built directly into the course.
This article was written by one of our course instructors...
Tarina van der Stockt
PT (BphysT), DPT
Education Director Physiopedia Plus