IVET, an Interactive Veterinary Education Tool1

Abstract

The use of e-learning tools for medical teaching is a common practice, but similar tools do not exist for veterinary teaching. In this article, we present a fully web-based e-learning platform, denoted Interactive Veterinary Education Tool (IVET), which is designed to support teaching and learning in veterinary science. To make content creation easier, it provides theory, exercise, and image editors with functionalities to prepare exercises and theoretical content including 2-dimensional (2D) images, 3-dimensional (3D) models, and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) files, which can be manipulated by the users. It supports different types of exercises such as quizzes, 2D and 3D location exercises, and exercises based on multiplanar reconstructions from a set of animal scans (DICOM files). In addition, a correction strategy is defined for each type of exercise to automatically correct them and avoid the teacher to perform this process manually. All data are stored in a central repository, including the material prepared by the teacher and the solutions sent by the students, from which the system is able to compute some statistics, such as the evolution of the students and the final score of a course. By this way, teachers can use this information to carry out continuous assessment. All the resources such as 2D images, 3D models, and DICOM files are stored in the multimedia repository, included in the central one. To obtain real 3D models from animal scans, a manual segmentation process is also described. The platform has been reviewed by a group of teachers through an experimental test, and its functionalities have been compared with other veterinary e-learning tools from the literature.

Students’ acceptance of e-learning approaches in Laboratory Animal Science Training

“…The combination of online teaching with classroom sessions, allows the delivery of more basic concepts before students have the opportunity to discuss and engage in face-to-face interactive activities to consolidate knowledge. [22][23][24] Successful results have been reported after e-learning implementation in veterinary education, 25,26 such as its use to complement ruminant endoscopy training, 22 farm animal clinical rotation, 23 or anatomical learning. 27 Moreover, research has highlighted the relationship between the flipped classroom format implementation and the use of online materials with better learning and performance.…”

The Application of 3D Anatomy for Teaching Veterinary Clinical Neurology

“…In respect to veterinary anatomy, the situation is very similar to that described before. The alternative methods to improve its learning, in comparison to other traditional techniques, are diverse [4,5,12,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. If we focus on veterinary neuroanatomy, the use of digital teaching, 3D reconstructions and computer-assisted resources is also widespread [2,3,15,16].…”

Educational use of animals in Europe indicates a reluctance to implement alternatives

“…For learning veterinary medical procedures, several e-learning platforms have been developed, e.g. by the University of Girona (Xiberta and Boada, 2019), University of Hannover (Müller et al, 2019), or Freie Universität Berlin (Vogt et al, 2019). Multiple surgical simulators are also available (Tab.…”