Key Issues Presentation
In a group of six students, I helped develop a PowerPoint presentation designed to answer a “Key Issue” question from Module 6: Urinary System. After making the PowerPoint, my group and I presented it to our classmates and teaching faculty and received questions and feedback from them afterward. Our question, regarding "Mouzer" the aged cat, had two parts and was “What tests might the vet have performed to check Mouzer’s kidneys and what results would you expect in a cat with renal disease?”
Reflective Commentary
Our group struggled to put together the PowerPoint for our Key Issues presentation. The module we did our presentation for was split in half by our four-week Easter holiday, and it was the last module we had before our final exams. Needless to say, our group was preoccupied with other schoolwork and personal investments. We couldn’t meet up during the break, and we didn’t discuss how we wanted to do our project before we all left. Nothing got done over break, and we had to do the whole project a few days before it was due.
This might not have been a problem if we had made a better plan about how to approach the question. Everyone just split up and found a diagnostic test for kidney dysfunction, without necessarily considering if it was relevant to the case we were given. This caused us to waste a lot of time and effort and created an unequal workload. In addition to the information issue, each member of the group formatted their slide in our group’s shared PowerPoint differently, so we had to spend more time fixing the formatting, shortening paragraphs to bullet-points for example.
One thing that I did like about how we put together our PowerPoint is that everyone put the URL or title of the journal article they referenced in the notes portion of the slide they made, so I could easily find it and cite it. This helped streamline the referencing process because I could complete it for the whole project, making sure everything was referenced correctly or at least consistently, and I didn’t have to spend a lot of time chasing people down to ask where they got their information.
From my own experience, I find group work more enjoyable with a designated leader than without having anyone fill the leadership role, and a recent study on leadership presence revealed similar results amongst participants of the study [1].
Overall, I am fairly satisfied with the outcome of our group project, but I do feel that I and another member of our group did most of the work, mainly because we had to fix and fact-check a lot of the parts we didn’t contribute ourselves. I think this problem stemmed from a lack of leadership and communication about the expectations we had for the project. We did have issues with everyone being out of town, but I think situations like that require more leadership, not less.
Once our group finished the PowerPoint, things went smoothly. Everyone did well during our presentation to the class, and I am happy with how the project turned out. Once we assigned our speaking parts, everyone prepared what they were going to say ahead of time. I think this part of the project went well because we sat down together and planned out which slides each person was responsible for during the presentation. The expectations we had for each other were much clearer than they were while we were making the PowerPoint, and everyone did their part. This further convinces me that leadership is what makes or breaks the project. In the future, I plan on working harder to establish a leader, whether that means filling that role myself or supporting someone else who wants to do it.
[1] Nejmeddine AB, Arjoun A, Belhadj S, Belhabib N. The Relationship of the Collective Effectiveness with the Leadership in a Group Work: a Project in the Field of Health. European Researcher 2015;95:429–41. doi:10.13187/er.2015.95.429. Abstract only.
Intended Learning Outcomes Satisfied
1. Communication – I communicated in verbal and written forms with my group members during our project, and I presented the PowerPoint we made to a group of my peers and qualified veterinarians.
6. Scientific Foundation – This project required the application of scientific principles to develop an answer to the questions we were assigned based on a specific case.
7. Research Questions – We were expected to form an answer for our assigned questions using scientific evidence to support it. We referenced several sources to develop our investigation and response to the questions.
8. Animal Body Systems – to approach our questions, we first had to understand kidney function in cats, as well as what their appropriate blood values and urine presentation are.
9. Diseases of Body Systems – To be able to discuss the diagnostics of feline kidney disease, we had to understand how it presents, what causes it, and what to do about it.
11. Pathology – Because the focus of our questions was on diagnostics, we had to understand the development of kidney disease, particularly how it presents itself in diagnostic testing during its different stages.
14. Professionalism – We presented our question and findings to our class and teaching faculty, so the PowerPoint we made and the presentation we gave were expected to be very professional, much like those that qualified veterinarians give at conferences.
16. Reflection – Working on this project caused me to reflect on the few other occasions I've studied feline kidney disease, particularly the BSAVA Congress I attended a couple of weeks before our presentation.