Recitation in infections disease pathobiology: An active case-based approach to learning

In the second year of the veterinary medicine curriculum at the University of Wisconsin, students receive infectious disease training in individual courses dedicated to bacterial and fungal diseases, viral diseases, parasitic diseases, pathology, clinical pathology, epidemiology, immunology, and pharmacology. By teaching these topics as focused subjects, the students receive a strong basic science background related to each discipline. However, this is an approach in which they may also lose the "forest" of overall infectious disease pathogenesis and pathobiology for the "trees" of specific viruses, bacteria, fungi, and so Forth. To bridge this gap, we developed a case-based, student-driven, active learning program called Recitation in Infectious Disease Pathobiology. In this course, we specifically seek to enhance horizontal integration among the infectious disease-related courses within the second-year curriculum and vertical integration between these courses and the medicine training of the third and fourth years. This article outlines the organization of the Recitation, student evaluation results (both numerical responses and selected subjective comments) from the first two years that the course was given, and current plans for course modifications based upon these evaluations.