Goal orientations of health profession students throughout the undergraduate program: a multilevel study.

Background: The achievement goal theory defines two major foci of students' learning goals (1) primarily interested in truly mastering a task (mastery orientation), and (2) striving to show ones competences to others (performance orientation). The present study is undertaken to better understand if and how health profession students' goal orientations change during the undergraduate program and to what degree gender, academic achievement, and self-efficacy are associated with mastery and performance orientation between students and within students over time.

Method: By means of an online questionnaire, students of medical, pharmaceutical, and veterinary sciences (N = 2402) were asked to rate themselves on mastery orientation, performance orientation, and self-efficacy at the beginning of five consecutive semesters.

Factors Influencing Seminar Learning and Academic Achievement.

Many veterinary curricula use seminars, interactive educational group formats in which some 25 students discuss questions and issues relating to course themes. To get indications on how to optimize the seminar learning process for students, we aimed to investigate relationships between factors that seem to be important for the seminar learning process, and to determine how these seminar factors account for differences in students' achievement scores. A 57-item seminar evaluation (USEME) questionnaire was administered to students right after they attended a seminar.

Feedback-giving behaviour in performance evaluations during clinical clerkships.

Context: Narrative feedback documented in performance evaluations by the teacher, i.e. the clinical supervisor, is generally accepted to be essential for workplace learning.

International survey of veterinarians to assess the importance of competencies in professional practice and education.

Objective: To determine the perceived importance of specific competencies in professional veterinary practice and education among veterinarians in several countries.

Design: Survey-based prospective study.

Sample: 1,137 veterinarians in 10 countries.

Investigating teaching performance in seminars; a questionnaire study with a multi-level approach.

Background: Teachers play an important role in seminars as facilitators and content experts. However, contextual factors like students' preparation, group size, group interaction, and content appear to influence their performance. Understanding the impact of these contextual factors on students' perception of teaching performance may help to further understand seminar teaching.

Programmatic assessment of competency-based workplace learning: when theory meets practice.

Background: In competency-based medical education emphasis has shifted towards outcomes, capabilities, and learner-centeredness. Together with a focus on sustained evidence of professional competence this calls for new methods of teaching and assessment. Recently, medical educators advocated the use of a holistic, programmatic approach towards assessment.

Teachers' perceptions of aspects affecting seminar learning: a qualitative study.

Background: Many medical schools have embraced small group learning methods in their undergraduate curricula. Given increasing financial constraints on universities, active learning groups like seminars (with 25 students a group) are gaining popularity. To enhance the understanding of seminar learning and to determine how seminar learning can be optimised it is important to investigate stakeholders' views.

Clarifying students' feedback-seeking behaviour in clinical clerkships.

Context: Why and how do students seek feedback on their performance in the clinical workplace and which factors influence this? These questions have remained largely unanswered in research into workplace learning during clinical clerkships. Research on feedback has focused mainly on feedback providers. Whether and how feedback recipients actively seek feedback are under-examined issues.

Development of critically reflective dialogues in communities of health professionals.

Critically reflective dialogues (CRD) are important for knowledge sharing and creating meaning in communities. CRD includes different aspects: being open about mistakes, critical opinion sharing, asking for and giving feedback, experimentation, challenging groupthink and research utilisation. In this article we explore whether CRD aspects change over time, through a study of two dialogues each from six different communities of veterinary health professionals.

Evaluating clinical teachers with the Maastricht clinical teaching questionnaire: how much 'teacher' is in student ratings?

Background: Students are a popular source of data to evaluate the performance of clinical teachers. Instruments to obtain student evaluations must have proven validity. One aspect of validity that often remains underexposed is the possibility of effects of between-student differences and teacher and student characteristics not directly related to teaching performance.

Effectiveness of a programme design for the development of competence in solving clinical problems.

Background: To apply what has been learned theoretically in a clinical context is for many students a major challenge. In order to ease their transition into practice, a training programme was developed, focusing on learning to solve clinical problems.

Aims: The programme is designed for veterinary medicine students in the preclinical phase with already a sound theoretical base in biomedical and clinical sciences.

Critically reflective work behavior of health care professionals.

Introduction: Better understanding of critically reflective work behavior (CRWB), an approach for work-related informal learning, is important in order to gain more profound insight in the continuing development of health care professionals.

Methods: A survey, developed to measure CRWB and its predictors, was distributed to veterinary professionals. The authors specified a model relating CRWB to a Perceived Need for Lifelong Learning, Perceived Workload, and Opportunities for Feedback.

Developing an online professional network for veterinary education: the NOVICE project.

An online professional network for veterinarians, veterinary students, veterinary educationalists, and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) educationalists is being developed under the EU (European Union) Lifelong Learning Programme. The network uses Web 2.0, a term used to describe the new, more interactive version of the Internet, and includes tools such as wikis, blogs, and discussion boards.

An instructional model for training competence in solving clinical problems.

We examined the design of a course that aims to ease the transition from pre-clinical learning into clinical work. This course is based on the premise that many of the difficulties with which students are confronted in this transition result from a lack of experience in applying knowledge in real practice situations. It is focused on the development of competence in solving clinical problems; uses an instructional model with alternating clinical practicals, demonstrations, and tutorials; and extends throughout the last pre-clinical year.

Development and validation of a competency framework for veterinarians.

Changing demands from society and the veterinary profession call for veterinary medical curricula that can deliver veterinarians who are able to integrate specific and generic competencies in their professional practice. This requires educational innovation directed by an integrative veterinary competency framework to guide curriculum development. Given the paucity of relevant information from the veterinary literature, a qualitative multi-method study was conducted to develop and validate such a framework.

Peer group reflection helps clinical teachers to critically reflect on their teaching.

Background: Student evaluations can help clinical teachers to reflect on their teaching skills and find ways to improve their teaching. Studies have shown that the mere presentation of student evaluations is not a sufficient incentive for teachers to critically reflect on their teaching.

Aim: We evaluated and compared the effectiveness of two feedback facilitation strategies that were identical except for a peer reflection meeting.

WSAVA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines.

Careful assessment of nutritional needs of dogs and cats must be taken into consideration in order to maintain optimum health, be part of a treatment regimen for a diseased state, or to maximize the quality of life in all animals. Therefore, the goal of these WSAVA Guidelines is that a nutritional assessment and specific nutritional recommendation be made on every patient on every visit. This will become known as the 5th Vital Assessment (5VA), following the four vital assessments of temperature, pulse, respiration, and pain that are already addressed on each patient interaction.

Undergraduate research internships: veterinary students' experiences and the relation with internship quality.

Unlabelled: The learning environment of undergraduate research internships has received little attention, compared to postgraduate research training. This study investigates students' experiences with research internships, particularly the quality of supervision, development of research skills, the intellectual and social climate, infrastructure support, and the clarity of goals and the relationship between the experiences and the quality of students' research reports and their overall satisfaction with internships.

Method: A questionnaire (23 items, a 5-point Likert scale) was administered to 101 Year five veterinary students after completion of a research internship.

A retrospective analysis of veterinary medical curriculum development in The Netherlands.

Over the past two decades, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University (FVMU) has introduced major curriculum changes to keep pace with modern veterinary educational developments worldwide. Changes to program outcomes have been proposed according to professional and societal demands, with more attention paid to generic competencies and electives and species/sector differentiation. Furthermore, changes in educational approaches and the educational organization have been proposed, aiming at a transition from teacher-centered education toward more student-centered education.

An admissions system to select veterinary medical students with an interest in food animals and veterinary public health.

Interest in the areas of food animals (FA) and veterinary public health (VPH) appears to be declining among prospective students of veterinary medicine. To address the expected shortage of veterinarians in these areas, the Utrecht Faculty of Veterinary Medicine has developed an admissions procedure to select undergraduates whose aptitude and interests are suited to these areas. A study using expert meetings, open interviews, and document analysis identified personal characteristics that distinguished veterinarians working in the areas of FA and VPH from their colleagues who specialized in companion animals (CA) and equine medicine (E).

Students' and teachers' perceived and actual verbal interactions in seminar groups.

Objectives: This study set out to examine how much time students and teachers devote to different learning-oriented interactions during seminar sessions and students' and teachers' perceptions about the occurrence and desirability of these interactions.

Methods: Students and teachers participating in eight seminar group sessions in Year 4 of an undergraduate veterinary curriculum completed an 11-item questionnaire which asked them to rate, on a 5-point Likert scale, the frequency of occurrence and level of desirability of three learning-oriented types of interaction: exploratory questioning; cumulative reasoning, and handling of conflict about knowledge. The questionnaire also invited positive and negative responses to aspects of group interactions and an overall mark (1-10) for the seminars and group interactions.

Perceptions of learning as a function of seminar group factors.

Context: Small-group learning is advocated for enhancing higher-order thinking and the development of skills and attitudes. Teacher performance, group interaction and the quality of assignments have been shown to affect small-group learning in hybrid and problem-based curricula.

Objectives: This study aimed to examine the perceptions of student groups as to how teacher performance, group interaction and the quality of assignments are related to one another and to learning effects in seminars of 15-30 students in a hybrid curriculum.