The design and outcomes of an animal emotions teaching plan for Veterinary Nursing students.

What is it about?

Creating teaching and assessment plans can involve much time and effort. To reduce work for others, this article shares a plan for teaching students how to recognise animal emotions and for assessing learning. It includes the behavioural signals of emotion that were identified for each species (dogs, cats, cattle, and sheep). It also reports on the results of using the plan, including some interesting findings on the student learning process.

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Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash

Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It presents a plan that can be used to teach students how to identify animal emotions. Correctly identifying and responding to animal emotions is important for animal welfare and for safety during animal handling. It also reports some new findings on the student learning process. In discussion board threads, some students used lay or anthropomorphic language to describe canine and bovine behaviour and most students had difficulty in identifying mixed emotions. This article also showcases that students can help to improve third level teaching by participating in educational research.

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