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Veterinary Students’ Sense of Belonging: Growing Community with Small Group Academic Enhancement

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Abstract

A student’s sense of belonging to a university is associated with success in academic setting, happiness, and satisfaction. It is therefore unsurprising that universities commonly strive to improve student measures of belonging especially considering its negative correlation with attrition rates. This study documents the implementation and assessment of a new curricular intervention at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine (RUSVM) and measures associated changes in students’ feeling of belonging to the university and accountability for their success. Specifically, small, group, faculty-guided weekly discussion sessions were introduced to the Veterinary Professional Foundation (VPF) course to complement a series of updated didactic only lectures. Voluntary surveys (“belonging to the university scale” [1] and the “personal accountability in education scale” [2]) were utilized to document student attitudes and feelings surrounding these variables. Likert scores from a control group of students who completed the VPF course prior to the curricular change were compared to the intervention group who engaged in the weekly guided discussion sessions via a Wilcoxon test. The intervention group reported significantly improved feelings of belonging to the university (p-values ranging from 0.008 to 0.027). Minimal change was noted between groups associated with accountability. The addition of weekly small group meetings has proven valuable at RUSVM in improving student sense of belonging to the university. Further research is indicated to determine if accountability may be improved over a longer period of monitoring with continued interventions.

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Data Availability

Data is available through corresponding author.

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Funding

William Little was funded by RUSVM Intramural (Intramural Grant No: 44015-2023).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis, USA

    W. B. Little, L. P. Hervé-Claude, H. French, J. Bradtke & E. Artemiou

Authors
  1. W. B. Little
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  2. L. P. Hervé-Claude
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  3. H. French
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  4. J. Bradtke
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  5. E. Artemiou
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Correspondence to W. B. Little.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Personal Accountability Scale (Original Survey)

Regarding your work as a teacher, to what extent do you feel that it is your duty to:

Give yourself a report on the extent to which you reached your goals at work

Give school management a report on the extent to which you reached your goals at work

Be evaluated by whether your students improve their grades

Be accountable for your students’ achievements

Pay for the consequences when your work does not meet expectations

Get credit for the success of your classes

Act by your inner moral standards

Act by professional ethical principles at your work

Develop professionally in order to accomplish your work in the best way

Learn from the work of outstanding colleagues

Be responsible for teaching in the best possible way

Be ready to use results of studies on instruction and education

Appendix 2

figure a

Distribution of prerequisite GPA between cohorts (p = 0.48)

Appendix 3

figure b

Distribution of baseline RUSVM 1st semester grades between cohorts (p = 0.10)

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Little, W.B., Hervé-Claude, L.P., French, H. et al. Veterinary Students’ Sense of Belonging: Growing Community with Small Group Academic Enhancement. Med.Sci.Educ. 33, 1165–1174 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-023-01857-1

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