Background There is a growing discontent within the health care industry regarding the state of preparedness of graduates to adequately function in a dynamic work environment. It is therefore required of higher education institutions to equip graduates with skills beyond disciplinary expertise, which would allow them to function optimally in work environments. This study presents a team dissection project that incorporates graduate attributes in an undergraduate first-year anatomy course for the medical orthotics and prosthetics program. Method Focus group interviews with students ( n = 23) were used to demonstrate the achievement of graduate attributes by aligning student perceptions of the dissection project with graduate attributes and indicators thereof. Results Students were positive about the effectiveness of the dissection project in enforcing anatomical knowledge; ensuring active engagement with human material; enhancing communication skills and teamwork; and increasing sensitivity towards cultural diversity. These views related largely to those graduate attributes which engage students towards becoming active and reflective learners; creative thinkers; independent and collaborative workers; effective communicators; and culturally and socially aware citizens. Areas of dissatisfaction included challenges with the use of technology for the video preparation; repetition of presentations and large dissection teams. Conclusion There is an emerging view that graduate attributes be integrated as early as possible into program curricula so as to become intrinsic in a student’s academic and professional development. Through the expansion of a dissection project forming part of a subject taught very early on in a program’s curriculum, the integration of graduate attributes and discipline-specific competencies are highlighted.

Background. The advent of COVID‐19 and the subsequent national lockdown has catapulted higher education institutions into emergency remote teaching (ERT). A principal challenge in this shift is the ability to stimulate student interest towards engagement with, and retention of, course content. The creation of teaching and learning (T&L) resources and activities using a combination of the visual, aural, read/write and kinaesthetic (VARK) modes is fundamental in ensuring student engagement. Objectives. To determine the learning style profiles of undergraduate students and to explore how student learning profiles may be incorporated in T&L approaches during ERT. Methods. This descriptive study profiles the learning preferences of undergraduate students in a health science faculty using the VARK questionnaire. The study further outlines modifications in T&L implemented to support the varied learning preferences during the COVID‐19 ERT response. Results. Our findings demonstrate that the majority of our students have a multimodal learning preference, with the kinaesthetic modality being the most preferred. Voice‐over PowerPoint presentations with transitioning images, and audio files, supported the visual and aural learners through asynchronous engagement. Additionally, online discussion forums and applied projects (such as theme park designs) enhanced asynchronous learning by stimulating the visual, read/write and kinaesthetic preferences, respectively. Microsoft Team sessions with PowerPoint presentations supported visual and aural learning preferences through synchronous engagement. Conclusions. Rethinking traditional T&L approaches towards supporting the diverse student learning preferences is critical in student‐centred T&L amidst the many challenges that ERT has precipitated. Academics need to be dynamic in their T&L approaches and intuitive in their awareness of how subject content may be modified/enhanced in the ERT environment.

The SADJ is licensed under Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-4.0. Visual learners prefer to see information and use visual aids. Aural learners, by contrast, prefer to listen and speak before reading and writing. Read/write and kinaesthetic learners tend to continually read and write the information and learn by doing and performing tasks respectively. 14,15

No abstract