Case-Based Learning: An Analysis of Student Groupwork and Instructional Design that Promotes Collaborative Discussion.

This article examines how professional veterinary students collaborate during in-class clinical case-based learning tasks within a Team-Based Learning (TBL) curriculum. Through audiovisual analysis of two student groups working on 49 case questions, the study identifies eight primary types of student statements and seven overall patterns of group collaboration, revealing that students either formulate answers independently before discussion or engage in immediate group discussion, with productive disagreement fostering deeper negotiation and consensus-building. Key instructional design factors influencing collaboration include the perceived difficulty of questions, allowance for multiple valid perspectives, the level of consensus required by the task, and the cognitive demand of the questions categorized as foundational knowledge, application, or integration. The findings suggest that veterinary educators can enhance student collaboration and learning outcomes by designing "groupworthy" tasks that are sufficiently challenging, allow for multiple interpretations, and require consensus on specific answers, while also encouraging students to articulate and justify their reasoning during discussions.