Interactive clinical cases in veterinary education used to promote independent study

This study set out to encourage veterinary undergraduates to adopt independent and deep approaches to their study in a five-week third-year course on the alimentary system by incorporating problem solving and decision analysis. We were interested in exploring the effectiveness of two implementations of online interactive case scenarios and the amount of staff time required to develop, deploy, and support their use by students. The majority of students who responded to our questionnaire attempted all the cases available and were able to work with very little tutor input. Cases that prompted students to type an answer before allowing them to progress were rated by all students as making them think more. The realistic nature of the cases, the way they stimulated students' interest, and the need to apply existing knowledge gained in lectures were cited as three of the five characteristics that students most liked. These characteristics map to a range of learning processes that are considered to form a fully developed deep approach by research in this field over the past 40 years. While resource implications are still high, this use of these case scenarios did engage the vast majority of students in independent and deep approaches to their study.