Assessment

Assessment summary

Semester 1	formative Stream MCQs x 5	7.5%	30min	end of each section		any computer	2013	2012	2011	2010	2009
	team essay	15%		30th May			63	65	66	64	66
	Stream therapeutics MCQs x 10	7.5%	unlimited	every week		any computer	84.5
Semester 2	formative Stream MCQs x 5	5%	30 min	end of each section		any computer
	Stream Theraputics MCQs x10	20%	unlimited	every week		any computer
	Stream therapeutics MCQ	20%	up to 4 hr	6th November	9.30am - 1.30pm	STB1 & STB2		52	48	47	48
	team essay	24%		17th October				73	72	73	72
	poster presentation	1%		17th October		IVABS foyer		100	100	100	100
	videos	0%		17th October
	total	100%					68	63	62	60	62

More about exams

Formative Quizzes

Do these quizzes on Stream in your own time. You get marks for this - it doesn't matter what score you get. This is to encourage you to use the quizzes to get some idea of how much pharmacology you know. If you can get at least 50%, you can move on to the next section.

Weekly therapeutics MCQs

This covers semester 1 material (including toxicology) and is in the form of 1 question per week with 9 or 10 possible answers, of which you should pick the best. Make sure you do the practice tests on Stream first so that you know the format! The questions cover a range of difficulty, and are designed to see if you have been doing enough work.

These will close at 8am on 16th October, when I will go through the answers and show you the reasoning behind them in that day's lecture slot.

Semester 2 Therapeutics MCQ exam

This covers the whole year's material and is in the form of 15 case scenario - type MCQs with 9 or 10 possible answers, of which you should pick the best. This should take you less than an hour, although the lab is available for four hours. this exam will be run by the Examinations Office, so they will expect you to turn up for 9.30am and take it seriously.

All the computer tests are open book (and since you are on a computer, this includes the internet), but you should be able to answer them easily from memory (pharmacology / toxicology MCQs) or by thinking about it (therapeutics MCQ). You are expected to do the tests individually rather than work in groups. They are designed to mimic the situation you will find in practice, where you are usually working by yourself to deal with a case, but have access to detailed information such as dose rates if you need it. Questions include things typically encountered in practice - cows with mastitis, dogs with broken legs, cats with abscesses, Koi carp requiring X rays, tuataras with priapism, etc, etc. (Nah, only joking about the last one.)

Make sure you do the practice test on Stream at home first so that you know the format!

Go to Stream

For details of the team essays, go to the group work page. If your essay is ready to submit, email it to me with Pharmacology-essay-2 in the subject line, or just click this link which will do it for you. Please do not put this in the subject line if you are just asking questions about the essays!!!

The pass mark will be 50% overall. The “average” student, if such an animal exists, can expect to get about 60%.

How much do you need to know for examinations?

It is not possible to rote learn a therapeutic recipe for every possible disease in every possible species you might encounter. It is important that you can rationally choose appropriate therapy for a disease with which you have no previous experience. This course should provide the initial structured learning which will enable you to both develop the skills and to obtain the knowledge necessary to become competent in the treatment of animals with drugs.

You will come across lots of drug names. Do not try to learn them all! It is worth trying to classify these into several groups:

emergency drugs - you should know what these drugs do, when to give them and at what dose. Fortunately only adrenaline, morphine, diazepam and iv fluids fall into this category, and the choice and initial dose rate of fluid is not critical.

commonly used drugs - you should know what these drugs do and when to give them.

rarely used drugs - you should know that these exist and where to get more information about them

The examinations are designed to test the application of knowledge gained through the course, primarily within realistic common case scenarios encountered in veterinary clinical practice. The therapeutics MCQs give more scope for you to demonstrate your depth of knowledge and to test your therapeutic descision making, while the pharmacology MCQs allow you to show how widely you have read. Do not worry about specific MCQs about obscure drugs; no-one is expected to get 100%!

This means that you must be able to apply your knowledge, not just regurgitate it. If you have a working understanding of the study guide and some common sense, you should pass easily. (You have to try hard to fail!!) If you memorise the whole study guide, you may get up to 90%, although you may also require some psychiatric drugs afterwards. If you want to get 100%, you will have to read around the subject, including the more scientific journals.

These notes are designed as a reference and contain more detail than is required to pass the examinations. Attempts to memorise them are a sign of stupidity.

There will be no mid term exams. You are expected to assess how you are getting on by answering the practice questions at the end of each chapter and marking them yourself using the answers at the back, or using the same questions on the web site - the computer will mark them for you.