Publikationsdatenbank

Equine virtual farm:
A novel interdisciplinary simulation for learning veterinary physiology within clinical context (2011)

Art

Hochschulschrift

Autor

Nassar, Maaly (WE 2)

Quelle

Berlin: Mensch und Buch Verlag, 2011 — II, 79 Seiten

ISBN: 978-3-86387-069-0

Sprache

Englisch

Verweise

URL (Volltext): https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/4587

Kontakt

Institut für Veterinär-Physiologie

Oertzenweg 19 b
14163 Berlin
+49 30 838 62600
physiologie@vetmed.fu-berlin.de

Abstract / Zusammenfassung

Providing competent veterinarians who could solve complex problems that rely on a broad range of basic core knowledge is increasingly challenging, particularly if teaching and learning basic sciences are required to be set within a clinical context. Many of the challenges including the complexity of curricular content and practicing clinical skills in a risk free environment have been addressed using simulations. However, in most of these few veterinary simulations skills were learned in isolation either from clinical practice or from the basic science knowledge, whereas the real life practice requires the integration of both. Therefore, the present study propose a contextualized screen-based computer simulation, the equine virtual farm (EVF), as an attempt to bridge basic-clinical science gap, through immersing students in a motivating virtual environment that reflects how problems are encountered in real life and how physiological knowledge and laboratory skills are integrated. EVF was designed to include four virtual learning environments: 1) Equine farm: in which the students are introduced to their different farm tasks as veterinarians through the virtual farm tutorial; 2) Horses yard: where students can check on horses health conditions and write yard reports; 3) Farm laboratory: in which students can analyse horses' blood samples and write laboratory reports; 4) Farm office: where students can use further diagnostic learning resources, including interactive books and internet links, as an aiding tools for writing their final diagnostic reports concerning the farm horses. To assess its effectiveness, 24 second-year undergraduate veterinary students, in Berlin Free University veterinary program, volunteered to try and evaluate EVF versus Blackboard (Bb) online course in learning two haematological laboratory experiments. Their learning styles were determined using Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, Kinaesthetic (VARK) questionnaire and their learning outcomes were assessed and evaluated using assessment and evaluation questionnaires, respectively. Assessment results' analysis with Mann-Whitney U test revealed no significant differences among volunteers scores regarding recalling experiment procedures in EVF versus Bb (p-value = 0.61, Power = 0.68). However, EVF participants tended to achieve higher scores than those in Bb group in the overall (p-value = 0.13, Power = 0.57), understanding (p-value = 0.07, Power = 0.38) and problem-based assessment questions (p-value = 0.06, Power = 0.45). Moreover, different students’ styles feedbacks indicated that EVF had been more useful and motivating than Bb in learning and practicing laboratory skills and further provided information that helped in the further development of EVF, as a contextualized learning environment.