Authors: L.C. Knox, L.A. Bernstein
In our local communities, barriers to visiting a veterinarian are nuanced. Cost of veterinary services is a significant barrier for many pet owners. Other regional factors contributing to gaps in veterinary care include lack of transportation, language or cultural barriers, and balancing the needs of children, elders, and personal, mental, and physical health with that of their cherished pets. Veterinary training historically prioritizes gold standard clinical approaches, inadequately preparing students to consider alternative, appropriate options when the gold standard is not financially feasible for a client. Animals are often left without any options for veterinary care as a result. Creative solutions are needed to ensure that pets’ health needs are met and that their people are supported, so that animals remain in their homes and families stay together. The CVM, in partnership with the Animal Humane Society on University Avenue, aims to create an innovative model to care for the animals within our communities. In addition to supporting community health, this process will train the next generation of veterinarians to provide responsive and responsible veterinary care to the entire community.
Authors: Root Kustritz MV, Rupprecht R
Captions are automatically generated by Zoom or by passage through Kaltura. Captions are available with captured lectures for student review. In this study, automatically generated captions from Zoom, Kaltura, and YouTube were compared for accuracy with captions generated by a human being. Also investigated was the effect of speaker on accuracy of captioning – does the speed with which someone speaks or their accent alter accuracy of captioning? YouTube was by far the most accurate of the automatic captioning systems. There were numerous mistakes made by Zoom and Kaltura and some significantly altered meaning. Mistakes were due to the transcribing systems, not to things specific to the presenters. Instructors should get in the habit of reviewing transcripts of their lectures to ensure students are not misled.
Authors: Root Kustritz MV1, Lashbaugh K, Rendahl A, Malone E, Larsen R, Burton E, Gordon-Evans W
Students express concern about having been forced to move toward more on-line or virtual learning starting in March 2020 with the COVID pandemic. In this study, student comfort with on-line/virtual learning, as demonstrated by examination scores, was compared with quality of on-line/virtual course offerings evaluated using a standardized rubric (Quality Matters). Student performance was directly associated with comfort level, with those students who were less comfortable performing less well. Student discomfort with on-line / virtual learning could not be mitigated by increasing course quality in this study.
Author: Abby Brown
Historically, anatomy students noted there are ‘too many resources’ for learning anatomy. It seems that having too many places to look for information causes frustration and negatively impacts the overall student learning experience. The use of an eBook serves as a ‘One Stop Shop’ for students to access all of their essential course materials in one consolidated resource and allows instructors a streamlined way to deliver (and update) content. Creating an eBook of anatomy lab content has helped resolve student concerns about sifting through multiple anatomy resources.
Author: Root Kustritz MV
Educational maturity is a measure of how students have moved on a learning continuum of early learners (the world is black-and-white and the teacher is the final expert) to adult learners (all information is nuanced and the teacher’s is one opinion about that information). This continuum impacts how students approach coursework, with early learners less apt than adult learners to function well independently. In this study, students were surveyed to determine how overall level of student educational maturity and to see if it changed over the four years of training. Students demonstrated a slight preference for courses designed to meet their level of educational maturity. The student population who volunteered for this study is at the 72nd percentile for educational maturity and probably is not yet at a point where complex, independent learning paradigms are preferred widely across the curriculum.
Authors: Kendra Eginton , Erin Burton, and Wanda Gordon Evans
EPAs for veterinary clinical practice have been adapted at our institution into a web-based application, but utilization has been poor. Gamification has the potential to strengthen engagement and change behaviors. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether gamified instructor-based interventions are beneficial in driving utilization of existing assessment tools. A four-month contest with monetary incentives and a physical leaderboard was implemented for our surgery service. In the four months prior to gamification, no evaluations had been submitted by the surgery service. 50 evaluations were logged during the contest. The response rate was 85.7% for residents, 33.3% for faculty, 33.3% for interns, and 0.9% for technical staff. As hypothesized, gamification resulted in increased logging of evaluations among all staff on the surgery service. Residents logged the largest number of evaluations. Clinicians that spent more time on clinics were more likely to submit evaluations. This demonstrates that novel strategies such as gamification can increase engagement among instructors. It also demonstrates that it is possible to increase utilization of already available educational tools through instructor-focused interventions.
Authors: Emily Barrell, Erin Burton, Perle Zhitnitskiy
Imposter phenomenon (IP) is a term that describes feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, and self-doubt in high-achieving individuals. Those who suffer from IP are unable to internalize and accept successes, which are instead attributed to luck rather than to hard work, knowledge, and ability. These individuals often fear that they will someday be exposed as frauds to their peers and others. IP is well-documented in a wide breadth of both social and medical sciences and has been found to significantly contribute to burnout, particularly cynicism, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization.
Between 60 and 68% of practicing veterinarians suffer from impostor phenomenon. That number is even higher among veterinary students where 82% exceed the clinical cut-off for impostor phenomenon.
Our objectives were to investigate IP in the same cohort of veterinary students during their final and clinical year at the UMN CVM (2021-2022), using mixed methods. Four surveys were sent out during the school year. Demographic data as well as students’ tracking information were collected. The Clance IP scale was calculated to assess the progression of students’ IP scores. At the beginning of their clinical year, 41.9% of respondents (n=31) had frequent or intense impostor feelings compared to 53.9% of the respondents (n=26) at the end of the first trimester. This percentage decreased to 40% (n=25) and 52% (n=25) at the end of the second and third trimester, respectively. Students identified specific events as having an impact on their confidence in open-ended questions. At conclusion, individual interviews were conducted for triangulation. Recurring themes were identified using a subjectivist inductive approach.
Authors: Milstein, M.S., Gilbertson, M.L.J., Bernstein, L.A., Hsue, W.
In order to address structural racism’s effects on patient care from individual to institutional scales, veterinary medicine must progress in its approach to DEI curricula. Given the recent changes to accreditation standards from the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education, veterinary colleges must more thoughtfully emphasize Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) into the veterinary curriculum. These efforts are critical to ensuring equitable care to all veterinary patients, and consequently, have major implications to veterinary clinical practice and public health. The Multicultural Veterinary Medical Association (MCVMA), along with nine other diversity, equity, and inclusion affinity organizations, developed a list of actionable items to address systemic racism in the veterinary profession. In this paper, we employ the MCVMA actionable items including: a) accountability and transparency, b) accessibility, outreach and engagement, and c) expanding membership and organization commitment, as a means to provide a framework for how to integrate anti-racism into the veterinary curriculum. We call for veterinary colleges to: shift DEI training from a framework of cultural competency to structural competency and cultural humility, extend DEI curricula beyond client communication and use service learning programs as a means to train students in equitable clinical practice, and recruit and support a diverse body of faculty and staff. By recognizing the effects of structural racism in veterinary medicine and highlighting specific examples of how it can be addressed through didactic coursework and experiential learning, we can craft a profession best equipped to fulfill the bonds of our veterinary oath long into the future.
Authors: Dawn Foster-Hartnett, Cheryl Dvorak, Tim Johnson, Barb Billington
Fatou Barry, John Chirayil, Alexia Pocrnich, Lily Qian, Cisintshas Vang
The University of Minnesota launched the Grand Challenge Curriculum (GCC) in Fall 2015 to support the UMN strategic plan, Driving Tomorrow. GCC courses address important global issues using a solution-driven, interdisciplinary approach. In GCC 3016/5016, Science and Society: Working Together to Avoid the Antibiotic Resistance Apocalypse, we explore the issue of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) from diverse perspectives with a focus on science communication. Our objective was to empower students to share information and enable change. Student groups were tasked early in the semester with finding a particular issue within the larger problem of antibiotic resistance and proposing a practical solution. We designed a series of scaffolded assignments with higher-order Blooms’ thinking that helped students give polished presentations and design websites they could share with their intended audiences. One group featured here also produced a podcast for high school students. Surveys suggest that students felt confident discussing AMR with others and felt motivated both to share information with others and to make changes in their own behavior.
Authors: Gerard Cramer, Timothy Goldsmith, Whitney Knauer, Erin Malone, Erin Royster, Perle Zhitnitskiy
Background
The curriculum at the UMN CVM allows DVM students to choose between several tracking options starting in the Spring semester of their third year. At this point, students with a food animal or rural career interest are advised to enroll in the following courses: Food and Fiber selective I and II (FF I and FF II), and Mixed & Food Animal Problems. A comprehensive review and update of the Food and Fiber courses was undertaken.
Summary of work
Curriculum changes were initiated and driven by a volunteer taskforce of Food Animal teaching faculty
Overarching learning objectives and outcomes were identified and scaffolded between the 3rd year courses and final year rotations.
FF I: Day-1 competencies for mixed practice or individual medicine
FF II: Day-1 competencies for population medicine in food animal productions
Final year rotation prerequisites, content, and structure were rearranged to continue the scaffolded structure.
Assessment topics were selected based on outcomes and adapted for various production animal species.
Hands-on activities including laboratories and numerous case discussions were added to 3rd year course content.
Results and next steps
Students’ overall satisfaction increased from 3.6 to 4.2 and from 3.5 to 3.9 out of 5 for FF I and FF II respectively and the emphasis given to hands-on experiences was greatly appreciated. Moving forward, the faculty taskforce is working to align the courses’ objectives with the day-1 competencies developed by the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges.
Author: Root Kustritz MV
Generative assignments require students to select, organize, and integrate information, as a form of active learning that better permits understanding and retention. Types of generative assignments are described. In this study, students rated various generative and non-generative assignments for their perceived value in their education and activities also were rated for how difficult they were to create and grade. Both non-generative and generative assignments were considered valuable. Teachers should consider the value of generative and non-generative exercises in helping students meet learning objectives in their course. Assignments that are very difficult to create and/or grade may or may not be associated with greater perceived value by the students.
Authors: Timothy Goldsmith, Gerard Cramer, Whitney Knauer, Perle Zhitnitskiy
Background: Traditional methods of food animal rotation teaching includes the use of an ambulatory service model. Challenges encountered with this teaching paradigm at the UMN CVM have led to the use of a different model.
Non-Service Based Targeted Teaching Rotation Model: The outcomes of farm visits center around observation of management, application of concepts, real-world outcomes, evaluation of farm data to drive recommendations. Hands-on experiences and planned farm visits are selected based on the targeted concepts to be explored with the students instead of traveling to a farm with a burning issue. In a non-service based, student-centered teaching model, the absence of conflicting responsibilities such as providing service to a producer ensures that the learning experience remains central to the farm visit. In addition, this model allows instructors to highlight other stakeholders of the food animal production chain such as feedmills, harvesting facilities or auction markets, that are equally important aspects of production systems and key learning experiences for our students.
Next Steps: Alignment between the course learning objectives and the Competency-Based Veterinary Education framework will be streamlined. The creation of a metric other than caseload to describe the quality of students’ clinical education is of interest to these authors.
Authors: EN Truckenbrod, RS Chow, PE Zhitniskiy, ED Malone
Surveys of University of Minnesota veterinary students indicate that current workloads are excessive during portions of the pre-clinical veterinary curriculum. Overly taxing workloads impair learning and place students at risk for burnout and mental illness. Consensus from medical education and published data suggests that targeting a 50-hour average work week may be ideal in the pre-clinical years, with no weeks exceeding a 60-hour maximum. It is critical that these work weeks include adequate study time, which improves learning and promotes migration of new information to long-term memory. University of Minnesota veterinary students currently report that they study 0.5–1.2 hours per hour of new content, which falls short of the 1.1–2 study hours per hour of new content recommended for the health professions. Students’ study time is constrained by 60-hour work weeks that include too much content new to students. Restricting the amount of new content in the pre-clinical veterinary curriculum is challenging but has the potential to both improve student well-being and maximize long-term retention of the most critical content.
Authors: Wanda Gordon-Evans and Kendra Eginton
Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) are commonly assessed using an entrustable scale. The Small Animal Surgery and Anesthesia course at the University of Minnesota is a didactic course that provides students with the first live animal ovariohysterectomy opportunity within the core curriculum (EPA 6). However, prior to the live animal laboratory, there are individual prerequisite surgical skills required. The aim of this project was to evaluate the utility of an entrustable scale to assess these skills. The hypothesis was that the entrustable scale would encourage practice and be useful for learning as reported by students, and it would facilitate as reported by instructors. All students enrolled in SAS II were provided a checklist of skills needed prior to performing an OHE with the O-Score, a commonly used entrustable scale. The minimum score for the primary surgeon’s responsibilities was highlighted in green and the orange marked the area where remediation would be required. Overall, students had mixed feelings on the amount that the checklist aided in learning although 71% reported a 7 or better on the scale. This may be due to feelings that some instructors were easier than others. Students also practiced more because of this assessment. It is possible that a check off list without the scale would have elicited the same response. It is a limitation of the study that there is no direct comparison to check off list in addition to the low response rate.