Evaluation of veterinary students' suture performance according to three different instructional modalities

Background: Higher education attempts to ameliorate the learning experience through match between learning subjects and students' learning styles.

Aim: This study evaluates the efficacy of three different instructional modalities aimed at teaching veterinary students how to make simple suture knots.

Methods: A cohort of 43 fourth-year students were split into 3 groups and provided with different instructional modalities: presentation with pictures and descriptions, hard copy text, and muted video. The student's surgical simulation performance was evaluated. Then, they answered a 23 question-survey, Fleming VARK questionnaire based, investigating their learning profile. Kruskal Wallis test evaluated different instructional modalities effect on student's performance. The chi-square test assessed differences between instructional modalities and learning profiles, profile self evaluation, and training session comprehension.

Results: Students showed auditory unimodal VARK profile (16/43), did not know their learning profile (26/43), and favored personalized teaching strategies (43/43). No differences were found for: surgical performance, except for forceps handling; and between instructional modalities: either for learning profiles (p-value = 0.43), or profile self evaluation (p-value = 0.42). Differences were found between instructional modalities and training session comprehension. As limitations, auditory instructional modalities, participants' age, and gender were not recorded or evaluated.

Conclusion: Our study provides feedback on modern teaching modalities in which students play a key role. Participants showed a variety of learning profiles although displaying no significant performance differences.