Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, Vol 31, Issue 1, 76-78
Copyright © 2004 by Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges
INNOVATIONS IN VETERINARY EDUCATION
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Attitudes of veterinary medical students and medical students toward collaborative learning: an experiment
JC Edwards,
K van Walsum,
CW Sanders,
TV Fossum,
M Sadoski,
R Bramson,
and
RM Wiprud
Leadership in Medicine Program, Humanities in Medicine Department, Room 157, Reynolds Medical Building, Texas A and M HSC College of Medicine, College Station, TX 77843, USA. jcedward@medicine.tamu.edu
This study measured the attitudes of 55 medical students and 30 veterinary medical students as they participated in an experiment of collaborative teaching and learning about basic surgical skills. Two parallel forms of an attitude questionnaire were developed, with three subscales: confidence in one's own surgical skill; collaboration with the other type of student; and inter-professional collaboration in general. These attitude scales were administered before and after an experiment involving the veterinary medical students teaching the medical students incision and exploratory laparoscopy in a laboratory setting using live rabbits. After the experiment, measures of the medical students' attitudes had increased significantly on all three subscales. Measures of the veterinary students' attitudes increased significantly on two subscales but declined on the subscale of inter-professional collaboration.
