Following on from my previous blog on new vet and vet nurse schools I wanted to write an almost parallel piece about the learning communities we create and the importance of these to our future vets and VNs.
What is a learning community?
In the strictest sense, a learning community is a group that meets to work on coursework or revision together. It may involve a group that has been designated as part of an assignment and is a semi-regulated learning community as a learning outcome may include providing evidence of group work, or it may be a self-regulated group of classmates who meet to fulfil their educational needs.
There are also professional learning communities you can join once you are qualified – this may be as part of further education or with clinical clubs or CPD events with your employer or peer group.
Who’s in your community?
You may already be part of a learning community without realising it; we can often feel we get put with our educational or work colleagues at various stages of life and don’t think too much about who we learn with, until we’re asked to think about it. Do you know who is in your learning community?
I think your learning community is very important in your education and career, and helps to form part of your professional identity. In contrast to the perceived issues of new vet and VN courses opening, the learning community may have less to do with the establishment you are in than you think.
A number of factors influence the communities you are part of and the educational establishment is one of them.
How a learning community is created
As mentioned above, learning communities may be found through formal education routes, personal choice or with employers or other educational opportunities. The communities all have similar factors that bind the participants together:
- Common goals – assignments, subject matter.
- Learning needs – the style of learning, or the outcome may be the focus.
- Equipment/skills sharing – the group may share equipment as in some OSCE learning communities I’ve seen set up.
The educational establishments role in creating learning communities seems obvious – you have a pre-chosen peer group of classmates going through the exact same journey as you, and you also have more advanced peers in the years above to find out information from and can also pass on your experience to less experienced peers in the years below. Many colleges and universities use peer learning as part of their teaching and it can help with your reflective practice skills, as well as expand your learning community outside your own year group.
This all sounds fabulous and of benefit to all – so why am I going on about it? Because I think the vet learning community provides a basis for professional identity in the future and a support network that is harder to find in the VN community, and I’d like to explore that – come and join me.
Is there a difference between vet and VN learning communities?
One of my reasons for exploring the importance of learning communities is the difference I see in professional identity and peer support post-qualification between vets and VNs – and I think this is linked to our educational and learning communities.
The difference between vet and VN learning communities is each vet school is a small part of the larger UK community of vet student learning, due to the similar mapping of courses and the presence of AVS. This helps create a community for vet students before they reach practice as part of their training. They are usually heading to similar deadlines at similar times, so a community builds across the UK.
In contrast to this, VN courses are often mapped individually to the course provider and establishment needs. Thus, creating an entire learning community of all VN students in the UK is harder.
The issue is VNs don’t always have their educational establishment as the biggest influencer on them, as usually their time in practice starts much earlier in their education than vet students, thus the community they become part of most quickly can be the work community rather than a university/college community.
Size matters
Finally there is the numbers game. Each vet school has quite large cohorts for each year – 200 to 300 students in one year isn’t unusual. But in vet nursing schools you may get 50 to 60 in a year, so while more providers of vet nurse education exist, each year group is smaller.
I feel this feeds into the differing levels of personal and professional identity we see between vets and VNs. A clear learning community exists from each vet school that graduates feel very much a part of for the rest of their career, both personally and professionally, and I’ve even witnessed vets from different schools bond over graduating in the same year. This group identity is the start of future professional and personal support groups.
This feeling of identity is strong is and isn’t replicated in quite the same way in the vet nursing world, which I feel quite sad about. If your community is based around your employer/employment it creates a very different and almost shifting identity that is also linked to your status or role with your employer, as well as your salary level.
What does all this mean?
I suppose that’s the question, I’ve rambled on about obvious differences with vet and VN education that probably won’t have surprised anyone, but it’s how these differences affect both parties post-graduation that has got me thinking.
We seem to lack a cohesive identity in vet nursing, and I feel a lot of this stems from our time as students. Is there a way we can create a cross industry community that provides a similar support network as the vet student peer group? Vet nurse course providers will have alumni events, but are any really fab that other places could copy? Or are the student numbers low enough that having subject specific alumni events is too costly at each provider?
Or am I even trying to fix an issue that no one else is bothered with? Always the dilemma when writing…
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