The Center for Innovation in Veterinary Education and Technology (CIVET) is focused on enhancing veterinary education, providing tools and training to educators, and advancing educational knowledge through research.
The Center for Innovation in Veterinary Education and Technology (CIVET) is focused on enhancing veterinary education, providing tools and training to educators, and advancing educational knowledge through research.
Strategic goals:
Past and current research projects:
CIVET researchers have investigated a number of important topics in veterinary education. The study findings are applied at Lincoln Memorial University-College of Veterinary Medicine (LMU-CVM) and are published so that other veterinary schools can use this knowledge to improve their teaching as well. A few of these projects are described below:
CIVET researchers have systematically sought to develop models for use in teaching clinical skills and to validate the scores produced by rubrics that accompany the models. Models and rubrics produced and validated include models for: feline venipuncture (blood draw); canine dental cleaning, castration (neuter), and ovariohysterectomy (spay); equine castration, venipuncture, and intramuscular injection; bovine castration, surgical correction of a left displaced abomasum, correction of a uterine prolapse, placement of a caudal epidural, and venipuncture. These models have been incorporated into the curriculum at LMU-CVM and other veterinary schools.
The development and validation of these clinical skills models and scoring rubrics have allowed researchers to answer important questions about how skills are best taught. Specifically, CIVET researchers have investigated the impact of numerous factors on student learning and retention, including whether the realism of a clinical skills model impacts student learning. This is important because more realistic models are more expensive. CIVET researchers performed two studies of this type, one comparing two abdominal suturing models, and one comparing three dental cleaning models of increasing realism. The abdominal model study compared a model made of foam and fabric to one made of more realistic silicone and found no difference in learning outcomes after students were randomized to train on one model. The dental cleaning study compared three models of varying fidelity and found that students were equally effective at completing the cleaning task after learning on one of the three models. However, students who trained on the least realistic model, a 2-dimensional model, were 4 minutes slower to complete the task than students trained on the 3-dimensional models. However, the least realistic model cost only a few dollars, and the most expensive model cost over a thousand dollars, so being 4 minutes slower seemed a reasonable trade off.
CIVET researchers have also investigated the impact of other factors on student skills learning and retention, including instructor to student ratio, instructor qualifications and experience, instructor assignment to tables versus free floating instructors, scheduling of laboratories in a massed versus distributed structure, and extracurricular surgical experience. Collectively, the work of CIVET researchers has added a significant amount to what is known about how clinical skills are optimally taught and assessed in veterinary schools.
Clinical skills aren’t the only topic investigated by CIVET researchers. Teaching radiology is another area that is challenging in veterinary schools due to a shortage of academic radiologists. CIVET researchers have investigated whether radiology can be effectively taught remotely using an online case-based course in a series of studies. Their findings have been overwhelmingly positive. The case-based course has received rave student reviews and, most importantly, has generated improved learning outcomes as compared with a lecture-based course. These improved learning outcomes were both short-term and lasted all the way from students’ second year of veterinary school until the time of graduation, two years later.
Finally, CIVET researchers have investigated the distributed model of clinical education. Traditional veterinary schools educate their students in a veterinary teaching hospital, while newer veterinary schools utilize a distributed model of clinical education, sending their students to a variety of educational settings, including tertiary care facilities, referral centers, and private and corporate practices in the community. CIVET’s research studies have collected competency data from the distributed model of education to demonstrate how students learn in this model and to collect students’ lived experiences. On-going research aims to demonstrate associations between individual rotations, features of rotations, and important student outcome measures.