Press "Enter" to skip to content

Student Physio Twitter Conference 2020

Welcome to the first Student Physio Twitter Conference! Taking place on Friday 1st May 2020, the twitter conference has a programme of 14 physio students from 4 continents presenting their research projects through a thread of 10 tweets.

The best way to follow the conference is on twitter by searching for the conference hashtag #PTTC20. That way you can read and respond to the presentations either as they happen, or later on at a time that suits you. The twitter feed below will also show the latest presentation tweets.

If you are a physio educator and would like your institution to be part of the student twitter conference next year, please head to the bottom of the page to register your interest.


Conference Programme

The conference programme on 1st May is arranged in 2 sessions, but remember that you can view the tweet presentations, ask questions and interact at any time after they are posted.

The early session starts at 6:00 UTC and has presentations from students in the Eastern hemisphere

The late session starts at 15:00 UTC and has presentations from students in the Western hemisphere

Why a Twitter Conference?

Twitter conferences have been used in healthcare and other fields. They are an alternative to a physical conference hosted on social media. This means that access to the conference is free, inclusive and open to anyone who wants to take part from anywhere round the world, the scope for conversation is much wider than at a traditional conference and there is very little environmental impact. In addition, the current state of lockdown in many countries due to Covid-19 has shown how digital technologies and social media provide opportunities to facilitate knowledge exchange and discussion within the profession when traditional forms of face to face interaction are not possible.

How does it work?

Our Twitter Conference is a forum for disseminating students’ research and generating discussion and feedback, just like at a typical physical conference. Similarly to a typical conference abstracts are peer-reviewed and selected for presentation at a given time and place as part of the conference programme. Unlike at a physical conference, however, the medium isn’t a poster or a platform presentation, but a thread of 10 tweets providing the background, methods, findings and conclusions of their research. 

Each presenters has a dedicated 15 minute presentation slot on the conference programme. The presenters are introduced by the conference chair at the start of their presentation slot. They then share their presentation in a series of tweets. Each tweet is a reply to the previous one, creating a readable chain of tweets with an easy to follow numbering system 1/10, 2/10, 3/10, etc. and ending with our hashtag #PTTC20. There is time to ask questions and engage with the presenter just like after a conference presentation by replying to their tweets. Unlike a traditional conference, this isn’t limited just to that 15 minute allocated time and you can interact with presenters at any point after their presentation.

Who is presenting?

The presenters are all current students of physiotherapy or physical therapy. Physiotherapy programmes from around the world have registered to take part and each participating institution is currently running a student peer review process to select their student representative who will be presenting their research project

Project aims

The aims of this project are to provide

  • Opportunity for students to disseminate research findings
  • Opportunity for students, clinicians, researchers and academics to learn about research issues and research agenda in other institutions and countries
  • Space for interaction between students, clinicians, researchers and academics from different institutions and different countries
  • Exposure for students and academics to twitter as a platform for CPD and post-registration learning
  • Opportunity for students to be involved in peer review and organisational aspects of a conference

Student Physio Twitter Conference 2021

We hope that this will become an annual event. If you are a physiotherapy educator and would like your institution to take part next year, please fill in the form below and we will get in touch when we begin to organise next year’s event. You can also contact Julia Chevan (jchevan@springfieldcollege.edu) or Ben Ellis (b.ellis@bham.ac.uk) to find out more


Main image by Allie Smith on Unsplash

Leave a Reply