Abstract
Technology has revolutionized education making it more accessible, overcoming time and space barriers, and reducing costs for undergraduates and professionals. In veterinary medicine as well as in other knowledge areas, distance education has evolved, going to the forefront of technological advances. Today, many tools, courses, and online platforms are available to facilitate and enhance the teaching-learning process for institutions and students. However, because of the Covid-19 (Sars-CoV-2) pandemic, educational institutions and veterinary medicine students around the world were forced to use distance education tools, many of them without being prepared or knowing the tools available or not having the necessary tools. In this sense, seeking to offer students and educators information about the evolution of distance education in veterinary medicine, its current situation and available tools, it was made a systematic review using the databases Science Direct, Scopus and Google Scholar, gathering more than 244 journal articles, and finally 116 articles were selected. The selected articles were analyzed for the history, platforms, and resources available, difficulties, current situation, and future perspectives, as well as the advantages and need of distance education in the actual pandemic situation. We can conclude that distance education is currently an indispensable tool in veterinary medicine, complementing face-to-face courses and reducing costs. This has led to the development of several platforms, applications and online educational resources that facilitate and enhance the teaching-learning process for educational institutions, veterinary students, and professionals. Keywords: Online learning. E-learning. Distance learning. Digital tools. Veterinary education.
Highlights
In education, as among other life fields, technology has brought enormous changes and adaptations to our lifestyles, and because of the modern world, and student and university demands, the usage of tools and on-line distance learning environments are increasingly common and necessary in higher education (GLEDHILL et al, 2017; PUTRA et al, 2021; SAADEH et al, 2021a)
The first distance education (DE) initiatives were developed as resources for veterinarians, and entities emerged like the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) in 1991, being the first to offer on-line courses for veterinarians, covering all the veterinary medicine specialties. (FERGUSER; PION, 1996)
The service was like VIN, offering databases, continuing professional development and an on-line community for veterinarians (DHEIN, 2007a)
Summary
As among other life fields, technology has brought enormous changes and adaptations to our lifestyles, and because of the modern world, and student and university demands, the usage of tools and on-line distance learning environments are increasingly common and necessary in higher education (GLEDHILL et al, 2017; PUTRA et al, 2021; SAADEH et al, 2021a). The wide popularization and access to computers, made easier the usage of distance education as a learning tool. Along with new information and communications technologies (ICTs), distance education (DE) is an important and widespread way of teaching and learning, where the student and teacher are geographically distant and their personal interaction is replaced by different media resources making easier the education diffusion, access, and globalization (MAHDY, 2020; DAS et al, 2021; PUTRA et al, 2021).
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