Page 4 - RVC4Life - May 2020

teaching and placement activity – with the hope that this can resume later in 2020, thus allowing the cohorts of students due to graduate in 2021 to do so on time. Students on the BVetMed course have been unable to undertake extra-mural studies (EMS) during the lockdown period meaning that many students, in many cohorts, will have an EMS deficit.
It is also impossible to virtually replicate the experience of conducting experiments in a laboratory. This has necessitated the adaptation of project work for students on our BSc, MSci and MSc programmes. Difficult decisions about suspending and modifying important parts of our programmes have needed to be taken while conducting a dialogue with our (many) accrediting bodies including the RCVS, the Council on Education of AVMA and the Society of Biology.
The challenges of remote teaching are matched, if not exceeded, by the challenges of remote assessment. However, the process of adaptation is
similar. One needs to establish what the purpose of the assessment is, and how this can be best replicated in a remote setting. Is it a test of knowledge, a test of understanding, a test of problem-solving, a test of clinical reasoning etc.
Methods of online assessment include timed and “proctored” single-best answer (multiple-choice) examinations and “open-book” examinations where students have access to learning resources while preparing their answers. Presentations and viva examinations can easily be conducted remotely. These new assessment methods bring with them a panoply of potential new ways of cheating – against which appropriate mitigation must be put in place.
If there is an upside to the current crisis, it is that it has required all our teaching staff to think more carefully about the purpose of their teaching, to think about how students learn best and how this can be most effectively assessed. It reminds us that some of what we do must necessarily be done face-to-face but other things can be as
easily achieved (if not more effectively achieved) by different means.
Some of what we have recently introduced is likely to become the “new normal”. Innovations forced upon us by necessity may turn out to be superior to what we previously did. Given the option to change back, we may choose not to do so. This could turn out to be one of the few silver linings in what is otherwise a very large cloud.
On a personal note, I hope that those of you reading this are well and that the impact of COVID-19 has not been too great on your lives or those of your families. My condolences go out to those of you for whom that is not the case.
Stay safe, stay well and always look for that silver lining.
RVCSU RESPOND TO THE CRISIS
The RVC and the Students’ Union have joined together to set up a community drive calling for laundered scrubs, to be donated to the NHS, and thermometers, to be distributed to the Potters Bar community.
If you are able to support the drive and
would like to get involved, please email
communityrelations@rvc.ac.uk
Donated scrubs can be sent to:
RVC Community Scrubs Donation, FREEPOST NW3352 Hawkshead Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL9 7BR
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