Center for Educational Technologies hosts meeting with Zoetis leadership

On May 14th, the Center for Educational Technologies (CET) at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences hosted a meeting with Zoetis leadership in College Station to discuss the Veritas partnership. Mr. Clint Lewis, executive vice president and president, International Operations; Dr. Michael McFarland, Group Director, CAD Veterinary Operations; and Dr. Harvey Crumm, Veterinary Academic Liaison, all at Zoetis, participated in a series of hands-on demonstrations of the new Veritas continuing education product lines recently launched by the CET. The new product lines feature immersive case studies and procedural videos. This past year, the CET has launched 26 new online continuing education courses on Veritas, developed in collaboration with faculty throughout the college. “Feedback on the new products has been very positive,” said Dr. Jodi Korich, the director of the CET. “Customers are telling us that they like the shorter 30-minute courses, and the case study format helps them to immediately apply what they have learned to their practice.”

The Zoetis visit also included discussions about future directions in continuing education (CE). The CET team presented ideas for combining online and face-to-face CE using the collaborative case-based teaching method they have pioneered with Dr. Ashley Saunders, associate professor of cardiology. In a study conducted in fall 2014, 97 percent of students surveyed preferred collaborative case-based learning to didactic lectures. “A pilot test during a recent CE conference suggests that practitioners may also appreciate the interactive engagement offered by the collaborative case-based approach as much as our students,” said Korich. Zoetis leadership was also presented with overviews of the CET’s research and development efforts in areas such as language localization to support international training and the use of 3D technologies to teach diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical procedures.

Veritas is just one example of how the team at the CET is partnering with faculty at the college to create high-impact instructional strategies designed to address today’s educational challenges.