Állatorvostudományok oktatása a digitális korszakban

Abstract

SUMMARY As every university, the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest must keep up with the rapidly changing generations of students, and at the same time, keep the high standards and old traditions in order to train highly-qualified professionals. To tackle the situation, firstly, we have to understand the digital age, and the new generations entering the campus. The digital age has brought many interesting and useful novelties. These novelties, on one hand, can distract students as they tend to lose focus on long lectures, but on the other hand, they can be used by the lecturer to engage students and improve knowledge transfer. Nowadays, digitally enhanced lectures mean a lot more than using Power point or Prezi presentations: we can interact with the students sitting in the rows by asking short questions that they answer on their phones, or instead of forbidding the use of smart devices, we can encourage them to visit trusted websites during the lecture to look up important information. Instead of avoiding and denying the changes brought by the digital age, it seems much more fruitful to turn those innovations, and use them on our sides. For example, a group of vets and vet-educators realized the fact that the new generations spend a lot of time on social media and decided to develop a website for professionals where vets, veterinary educators and veterinary students can interact online in a virtual framework (Novice project funded by the European Union). In the first part of the article, the authors will sum up how the lectures have changed due to the influence of the digital technologies. In the second part, 2 EU projects are going to be described that helped the UVMB to enter the digital age: the Novice project - building a social media for veterinarians and vet students; and the VetVIP project - using virtual patient to teach basic subjects (physiology and biochemistry).