Poster Board Number: 153
Title: The Genesis of a New Course in Critical Scientific Reading with a Wikipedia Project Component
Objective: We describe a case study in the development of a new graduate-level course on critical scientific reading for first-year veterinary students. The course was designed to educate students in literature search strategies and to stimulate their critical evaluation of scientific articles in basic, clinical, and translational research disciplines. The course is designed to reinforce the use of the scientific method in the evaluation of biologic and clinical problems and to encourage students to extrapolate and integrate concepts across disciplines, an important component of the One-Health initiative.
Methods: Course coordinators in the first year curriculum at the college of veterinary medicine and the veterinary medical librarian organized a critical scientific reading course based on perceptions of additional need for information literacy, concept building, and scientific analysis. Students were asked to read and critique papers for scientific importance, validity of experimental design, statistical analysis, results, contributions to the literature, and merit of the study conclusions.
Results and Conclusions: A fourteen-week course with one-hour weekly meetings was designed for second semester students. The course began with didactic instruction from the veterinary librarian on literature searching, followed by a representative scientific reading and critique. Scholarly articles were selected for a cross-section of mechanistic and descriptive features, basic biology of relevance to veterinary medicine, high journal quality, hypothesis testing, use of multiple research disciplines in the generation of data, and relevance to clinical medicine. Papers were presented by groups of seven to eight students in “Journal Club” format using a standardized evaluation rubric. An additional class used a “point/counter-point debate” theme to discuss two papers presenting differing conclusions. Lastly, students were assigned a list of veterinary-related Wikipedia entries from which they were required to add meaningful information with source citations. To assess course outcome, a pre- and post-course evaluation tool was implemented to assess validity of the learning objectives.
Authors: Andre J. Nault, Head Librarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Veterinary Medical Library; Robert J. Washabau, Professor, Medicine, and Department Chair, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Department; University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
