Evaluation of Student Engagement, Communication, and Collaboration During Online Group Work: Experiences of Fourth-Year Veterinary Medicine Students.

This article examines the impact of online case-based learning (CBL) group activities on engagement, collaboration, and communication among fourth-year veterinary students at University College Dublin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite high student satisfaction and perceived learning benefits, interactions were primarily limited to task division and answer collation via chat and messaging apps, with few live meetings or in-depth discussions. The study found that assignment of group roles and rules was often treated as a formality, conflicts were generally avoided rather than addressed, and individual engagement in group work did not correlate with academic performance. The authors suggest that fostering higher levels of collaborative learning in online veterinary education may require formal training in teamwork skills, scheduled meeting times, workload adjustments, and active monitoring of group interactions.