Hart L, Wood M, Weng HY. Mainstreaming user-friendly curricula on alternatives for research scientists. ALTEX. 2006;23(Special Issue):75-77


Abstract

Alternatives have the potential to arouse interest and involvement when they are presented within the audience’s context of research interests. Targeted presentations designed and presented for specific courses, workshops, or symposia complement other information and profile the practical value of bibliographic searching techniques for accessing information on alternatives. Courses at UC Davis where we routinely offer presentations include: for veterinary students, Mouse Behaviour and Biology (website: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/ Animal_Alternatives/phr408-Mice.html); for graduate students, The Mouse as an Experimental Model for Human and Animal Diseases; for undergraduates, Introductory Companion Animal Biology; and, for junior medical and veterinary faculty, Mentored Clinical Research Training Program. We offer workshops each year for veterinary laboratory animal residents from the California National Primate Research Center and the Center for Laboratory Animal Science. Workshops also are delivered on a tutorial, hands-on basis for visiting veterinarians and librarians, including USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Preceptor Veterinary Fellows each year. These small groups are instructed on-site. For symposia on emerging techniques, we developed presentations on new methods of imaging (website: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/Animal_Alternatives/ imaging.html) and cell culture and explants (website: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/Animal_Alternatives/cell.htm). Each presentation is targeted to the particular users and their current topics of attention. Special web pages are prepared and configured that users can access. This method of instruction offers support to users in efficient searching within their context of the course material or work setting, such that the alternatives curricula supplement their needs.





Link to journal: ALTEX - Alternatives to Animal Experimentation