When your kitty gets sick, veterinarians rely on skill, education, and experience to get her purring again.

At Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, Professor of Feline Internal Medicine John August combines an audience response system, case studies, and a flipped classroom model to teach his 80 students (future doctors).

Over his long teaching career, Professor August has found that lectures in large, professional courses tend to be very didactic. The usual format sometimes discourages students from thinking through complex problems on their own, and risking incorrect answers in front of professors and peers.

According to August, “The research shows that veterinary medical students prefer to study independently, spend minimal time in high-level knowledge processing with their peers, and value strong direction from their instructors. Paradoxically, students state that they enjoy working in groups to solve problems with clinical relevance.”

For this reason, the traditional, rote-learning lecture style was not working for Professor August, nor for many of his students.

Flipping + Polling = Confidence

To address these concerns, Professor August made new goals. He set out to accomplish the following:

• Change the course format and introduce new technology.
• Improve confidence in decision-making for students as they enter their clinical year.
• Provide timely opportunities for students to think independently, express opinions, commit to decisions, debate, and solve problems.

The method he chose to accomplish his goals was the flipped classroom model, plus polling technology from Poll Everywhere. With these tools, Professor August found that he could help to increase students’ confidence in thinking and decision-making, as well as increase interaction in what used to be a one-sided professional lecture.

In a recent interview,  Professor August reported on the results, “Poll Everywhere has been really useful in helping students complete their thought processes. Students get a lot of benefit out of that.”

Introducing an interactive polling software wasn’t a foolproof solution, though. Professor August admits that he over-used the technology when he first started implementing it in 2011. In the years since then, he’s discovered a new set of best practices for his new model of instruction.

Best Practices in a Flipped Professional Classroom

Professor August’s classrooms typically employ two projectors: one used to present materials related to case studies, and another to project poll questions and results. In a typical hour, he says, he asks no more than five questions via Poll Everywhere.

He keeps it simple: “I don’t use it in a very complicated way. I try to use it for its best educational use– for its best impact.”

For Professor August that means a lot of open-ended poll questions instead of multiple choice options. He asks the question, allows students to answer, and invites them to discuss the posted poll responses with their partners. Then he asks the same question again. This process, he explains, adds a collaborative element to the course, and models real-world scenarios, where students will have to think through complex problems and seek advice, in order to arrive at equally complex solutions.

Still, he admits that less is more when it comes to using technology to involve students. “The system has been used sparingly to test prior knowledge, determine understanding of critical concepts, and to promote peer learning. The quality of question development and the timing of polling exercises were central to achieving positive learning outcomes.”

He also decided to adapt the way he presented polls, to better mimic real life veterinary situations. “Because communication skills are an essential competency for veterinarians, the majority of questions posed in class were verbal, rather than using Poll Everywhere. Anecdotally, the non-intimidating use of polling technology has appeared to increase the students’ willingness to express opinions verbally during class discussions.”

Positive Outcomes for Vets and Pets

By their third year of veterinary school, most students have endured no less than seven years of higher education. During the undergrad years, students have used clickers to mark attendance and answer quiz questions so often that Professor August believes that they may be burned out by dreary pedagogy and tracking technology, by the time they enroll in his course.

Because of this, he wants his courses to be not only useful, but fun, too. So he invites students to use devices they already own—phones, laptops, tablets… the same devices they’ll use later in their veterinary practice. He also makes participation in the polls optional. Despite this, he reports that 75% of students actively participate.

This relaxed approach contributes to his students’ ability to think and respond without fear of embarrassment. To keep things even more relaxed, he enables anonymous responses to his polls.

“Students valued anonymity very highly. Some students commented specifically on the detrimental effect of hand-raising on completing the thought process in their previous classes,” he says. “They appreciated the opportunity to choose an answer, make a decision, and be wrong. Hearing the correct answer after an incorrect response was submitted was an important motivator for self-improvement, and counter-intuitively improved understanding of concepts.”

As a result, Professor August’s courses seem to be nurturing confident decision makers, who can think independently as they transition into real-world scenarios after graduation.

Of course, this process takes time and finesse. As computers fit into pockets, and knowledge is increasingly accessible and social, an approach like this might be essential for the world that we—and our pets—inhabit.