Setting Up and Running Online Communities of Practice (CoPs) for Veterinary Educators

Communities of practice (CoPs) are social systems consisting of individuals who come together to share knowledge and solve problems around a common interest. For educators, membership of a CoP can facilitate access to expertise and professional development activities and generate new collaborations. This teaching tip focuses on online CoPs and provides tips for setting up and running such communities. The initial planning phase involves establishing the purpose of the CoP, recruiting an administrative team, designing the structure of the online environment, and choosing a platform. Once the online platform is launched, running the CoP involves building the membership, encouraging engagement (primarily in discussion forums), finding ways to create and share useful resources, and sustaining the community as an active and effective CoP. We also describe a specific example of an online CoP for veterinary educators involved in clinical skills teaching. The membership has grown to represent an international community who engage in a range of activities including sharing knowledge, tips and ideas, asking questions, discussing challenges and promoting collaborative activities

Promoting Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine through the online resource ‘EBVM Learning’: User feedback

‘EBVM Learning’ is a freely available resource created in 2015 by an international team with the support of RCVS Knowledge. The resource comprises a series of online modules teaching the fundamental concepts of evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM) (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply & Assess) supported by case studies, exercises, worked examples and quizzes. The aim of the current study (undertaken in 2019) was to review ‘EBVM Learning’ to ensure its ongoing relevance and usefulness to the range of learners engaged in EBVM. Feedback was gathered from stakeholder groups using website statistics and feedback forms, a survey and semi-structured interviews to provide a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.Website statistics revealed an international audience and a steady increase in visitors exceeding 1,000 per month in August 2020. Feedback via the online form (n=35) and survey (n=71) indicated that the resource was well structured, with an appropriate level and amount of content, useful examples and quizzes and the majority of respondents would use it again. Semi-structured interviews of educators (n=5) and veterinarians (n=8) identified three themes: features of the ‘EBVM Learning’ resource (strengths, suggestions for improvement), embedding the resource in education (undergraduate, postgraduate) and promoting EBVM (challenges, motivation for engagement). At a project team workshop the results were used to plan updates to the existing content and to identify new ways to promote learning and engagement. An updated version of ‘EBVM Learning’ was developed.‘EBVM Learning’ is helping to produce the next generation of evidence-based practitioners and enabling to engage in the concepts of EBVM as part of their clinical practice