Biomedical Rounds success story for WCVM
WCVM students Lynn Smart and Vicki Patrie
“Biomedical Rounds,” a new course for first-year students at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, has tied for second place in the 2010 Alan Blizzard Award competition — a national program that recognizes successful examples of collaborative university teaching and enhanced student learning.
The WCVM submission, entitled “Integrative teaching and learning to bridge pre-clinical and clinical sciences in veterinary medicine,” is based on the collaborative efforts of professors in WCVM’s Departments of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences, Large Animal Clinical Sciences and Small Animal Clinical Sciences. Drs. Baljit Singh, James Carmalt, Anthony Carr, Chris Clark and Elisabeth Snead collected data from the students over the past few years and prepared the submission for the competition.
The course, which was developed and introduced as part of the veterinary college’s revised curriculum, allows first-year students to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to real clinical cases. It’s designed to facilitate integration of learning materials within biomedical sciences with other components in the veterinary medical curriculum.
The WCVM initiative was one of 15 high-calibre, collaborative projects that entered the awards competition. Members of the selection committee commented that the WCVM project was excellent in its design, planning and implementation.
Organized by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) in 2000, the Alan Blizzard Award was established to encourage, identify and publicly recognize those whose exemplary collaboration in university teaching enhances student learning. Blizzard was the STLHE president from 1987 to 1995.
This isn’t the first time the WCVM project has been recognized for its excellence: the teaching project received the University of Saskatchewan 2008 Provost’s Prize for Innovative Practice in Teaching and Learning.
