I'd like to see how you 2015 kids like the new curriculum.
The new curriculum, can't comment on whether it's better or worse than the old since I haven't lived both, but so far I love it. There are still some kinks in the system here and there, and they are figuring some things out as they go, but most if not all of that should be smoothed out for the next class, so you're all welcome
Animals: I think we are really lucky the way things have changed, from what I understand we have a lot more hands-on coursework with real live animals!! No really, it's awesome today I did a physical exam on a cow. We also get to rotate through the clinics in the hospital, every 3 weeks half our class is in clinics shadowing 4th year students, residents and clinicians to work up cases, work through a list of differentials, and often participate in rounds.
Time in class: We have a lot more free time during the days, which means you have to be a little more dedicated to directing your own study time and objectives than past years, but I honestly can't imagine what it's like for them. Most of our days in this first block have been 3-6 hours of lecture/lab and we've only had a few days of lecture for 8 hours straight which completely wiped me out mentally, so I can only imagine what the other classes have been through. One thing I will say though is just because we have less time in lecture doesn't mean we are getting less material, some professors have come in saying well I used to give 3 lectures, but now I only have this one, so I combined them all into the next 50 minutes which means there often isn't much time for questions and the material is really dense and you really cannot miss a lecture.
Block scheduling: I was a little wary about this, but I really like it so far, though we are really still in our first foundation block (kind of laying a framework for all the organ system blocks later) which is a more Veterinary focused recap and expansion on a lot of your pre-requisites which has included cell bio, physiology, histology, pharmacology, immunology, basic neuroscience, neoplasia, inflammation and pathology. In some ways it's an amalgamation of the first quarter courses that years ahead of us have had(though some things we are getting in first year that second years are also just now seeing), but because it's all one course with core block leaders(though up to 40 faculty members have been involved either through our PBL or lectures) we aren't inundated with constant quizes and tests and instead have had one test every 2 weeks or so on the past material. It's also kind of nice because we don't have to worry about course scheduling and enrolling in anything, it is just done automatically for you and you just need to show up when and where they tell you.
PBL: This will be incorporated different ways based on the discretion of each block leader, but so far has actually gone a lot better than I had expected. A common theme among vet students is that we carried our groups for undergrad group projects so that was an initial fear here, but since we were almost all that way it means there is a much more even contribution to workload and discussions which is great. We have only really worked through 3 cases so far, one kind of pre-view doctoring/professionalism one, a pharmacology problem which was a little different, as well as one dealing with a medical decision, but the point on the last on is not so much to come up with a presentation as to work through the mechanisms of a disease process and you get as much out of it as you put in.
I should get back to histology studying now, but hopefully that addressed some of the changes in the curriculum, and let me or some of the others like heylodeb know if you guys have more questions, as the year progresses we'll also have a better idea of how things will work from block to block.