Evaluation of veterinary students' suture performance according to three different instructional modalities

Higher education attempts to ameliorate the learning experience through match between learning subjects and students' learning styles.

This study evaluates the efficacy of three different instructional modalities aimed at teaching veterinary students how to make simple suture knots.

A cohort of 43 fourth-year students were split into 3 groups and provided with different instructional modalities: presentation with pictures and descriptions, hard copy text, and muted video. The student's surgical simulation performance was evaluated. Then, they answered a 23 question-survey, Fleming VARK questionnaire based, investigating their learning profile. Kruskal Wallis test evaluated different instructional modalities effect on student's performance. The chi-square test assessed differences between instructional modalities and learning profiles, profile self evaluation, and training session comprehension.

Students showed auditory unimodal VARK profile (16/43), did not know their learning profile (26/43), and favored personalized teaching strategies (43/43). No differences were found for: surgical performance, except for forceps handling; and between instructional modalities: either for learning profiles (p-value = 0.43), or profile self evaluation (p-value = 0.42). Differences were found between instructional modalities and training session comprehension. As limitations, auditory instructional modalities, participants' age, and gender were not recorded or evaluated.

Our study provides feedback on modern teaching modalities in which students play a key role. Participants showed a variety of learning profiles although displaying no significant performance differences.