WikiVet word cloud

The Online Veterinary Anatomy Museum

Video describing the use of digital video and media core at the RVC.



The Royal Veterinary College & MediaCore from MediaCore on Vimeo.

The End of an Era!

After a small party last night, the RVC today officially switched over from Blackboard to Moodle!

Paper presented at ALT C 2012 Conference

A new model for  collaboration with publishers in developing open educational resources

Background

The current economic challenges of UK further and higher education[1] are likely to impact on the fortunes of future generations of students. One area that will surely be affected is the problem students encounter in finding funds to afford high cost text books. The publishing sector shows no indication of reducing prices to help alleviate this situation[2]. As a result, libraries are left struggling to purchase sufficient texts with diminishing budgets in order to support the experience that students expect from higher tuition fees. This is an uncomfortable “confrontation with reality”.

Open Educational Resources (OER) provide new opportunities to widen academic access to online literature. However, this approach can also present a competitive challenge to publishers who rely on a commercial return. This paper describes an initiative which set out to challenge the apparent conflict of interest by exploring ways that academia could actively develop new partnerships with publishers based on the joint production of OERs.

Approach

The project was based around a comprehensive professional wiki with over 3,000 pages of content including an extensive set of curriculum resources. In discussion with a number of commercial publishers a mutual benefit in sharing material was identified. By contributing free content to the wiki, the publishers recognised that they could raise awareness of their own commercial resources. Content was provided under a Creative Commons licence and then repurposed so that it could be embedded into the wiki.

A number of strategies were developed in order to drive extra traffic to these new resources. Including translation of the content into French and Spanish, publishing podcast versions of key content on iTunes and promoting resources using Facebook , Twitter and e-newsletter feeds. User statistics on access to this content and levels of referral traffic were recorded and the impact of different promotion strategies compared.

Results

This paper summarises the key findings of the project including describing the learner’s perspective as well as that of the academic and the publisher. It presents some of the benefits of collaboration but also highlights areas that need careful consideration when entering into such partnerships.

Conclusion

This paper will be of interest to colleagues wishing to explore ways that they can access new sources of open content which could enhance their own teaching materials.

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[1]     Wilkinson J and B Bekhradnia (2011). Higher education: students at the heart of the system. An analysis of the higher education white paper. Higher Education Policy Institute. www.hepi.ac.uk [All URLs in this document were accessed August 2011].

[2]     Monbiot G (August 2011). The Lairds of Learning. www.monbiot.com/2011/08/29/the-lairds-of-learning/

AMEE 2012

At the AMEE 2012 Conference in Lyon we ran a pre conference workshop on Web 2.0 tools. This event was organised by Veterinary Education Worldwide (VIEW).

Together with our colleagues, along with our colleagues Professor Sarah Baillie and Dr Jan Ehlers, we ran a series of sessions to explore how tools such as Facebook, Blogs and Wikis could be better used to enhance veterinary education and learning. Versions of some of our presentations are embedded below. However, for more information register with the NOVICE web site and visit the VIEW section!

VIEW 2012 Workshop - Facebook from nshort1

AMEE 2012 VIEW Workshop Web 2.0 Tools from nshort1

AMEE 2012 Wiki workshop from nshort1

JVME Paper : Development and Preliminary Evaluation of Student-Authored Electronic Cases

Chris Trace, Sarah Baillie, Nick Short

In medical education, virtual patients are now widely used to support and enhance clinical teaching. However, there is still only a limited adoption of similar methods in veterinary education. This paper describes an initiative at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London to develop student-authored cases during clinical rotations that were subsequently adapted for self-directed learning in the undergraduate curriculum as virtual patients. This approach was designed to enhance the quality of the clinical learning experience, assist in the development of clinical reasoning skills, and complement the existing teaching caseload. 

The creation of virtual patients involved a two-stage process. In the first stage, students compiled clinical case data and media from patients admitted to the teaching hospitals. They then used these resources to develop electronic cases using a customized Microsoft PowerPoint template that were presented at grand rounds to clinicians and other students. In the second stage, selected cases were further developed with the integration of self-assessment and additional media to create virtual patients for use in teaching. 

A survey was used to gather feedback on students' experiences in creating and using electronic cases. It was completed by 163 final-year students (81%) and the results indicated that all respondents had created electronic cases on one or more rotations (mean=4.3 rotations, range=1–9). Overall, the feedback suggested that the students found creating and using these cases useful and that the experience improved their approach to a case.

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