The First Shared Online Curriculum Resources for Veterinary Undergraduate Learning and Teaching in Animal Welfare and Ethics in Australia and New Zealand

The First Shared Online Curriculum Resources for Veterinary Undergraduate Learning and Teaching in Animal Welfare and Ethics in Australia and New Zealand

Animals, May 2015

26479241

Jane Johnson, Teresa Collins, Christopher Degeling, Anne Fawcett, Andrew D. Fisher, Rafael Freire, Susan J. Hazel, Jennifer Hood, Janice Lloyd, Clive J. C. Phillips, Kevin Stafford, Vicky Tzioumis, Paul D. McGreevy

The need for undergraduate teaching of Animal Welfare and Ethics (AWE) in Australian and New Zealand veterinary courses reflects increasing community concerns and expectations about AWE; global pressures regarding food security and sustainability; the demands of veterinary accreditation; and fears that, unless students encounter AWE as part of their formal education, as veterinarians they will be relatively unaware of the discipline of animal welfare science. To address this need we are developing online resources to ensure Australian and New Zealand veterinary graduates have the knowledge, and the research, communication and critical reasoning skills, to fulfill the AWE role demanded of them by contemporary society. To prioritize development of these resources we assembled leaders in the field of AWE education from the eight veterinary schools in Australia and New Zealand and used modified deliberative polling. This paper describes the role of the poll in developing the first shared online curriculum resource for veterinary undergraduate learning and teaching in AWE in Australia and New Zealand. The learning and teaching strategies that ranked highest in the exercise were: scenario-based learning; a quality of animal life assessment tool; the so-called 'Human Continuum' discussion platform; and a negotiated curriculum.