Dr Aaron Herndon

Snr Lecturer- Small Animal Medicine

School of Veterinary Science
Faculty of Science
a.herndon@uq.edu.au
+61 7 535 15031

Overview

Research Interests

  • Feline Diabetes Mellitus
    My graduate degree work was in the field of feline diabetes and novel therapies to managing this desease.
  • Assessment in Higher Education
    Specifically, assessment methodologies in health education. We have several projects investigating good assessment practice in technical skills, clinical reasoning, and clinical knowledge. Currently producing an assessment map that will be used to inform a "strategic assessment plan" for the curriculum.
  • Curriculum Mapping and Design
    Investigating curriculum and assessment mapping and how to visualise these maps in a way most accessible to the various user groups.
  • Cancer biomarkers
    Study of serum and tissue biomarkers for canine cancers - specifically prostate and lymphoma.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy of Veterinary Science, Oklahoma State University–Stillwater
  • Doctoral Diploma of Veterinary Medicine, Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University

Publications

View all Publications

Supervision

View all Supervision

Available Projects

  • Graduates of the BVSc are considered "practice ready" for licensure in Australia. In order to ensure that students have met the program learning objectives and can demonstrate the requisite technical skills, clinical skills, and knowledge base the School of Veterinary Science re-designed our assessment format and instituted a new "capstone" examination administered to all students at the end of their clinical year. This project aims to investigate the performance of the assessment, student and staff opinions about the new assessment structure, and impacts of this assessment on the students and curriculum.

    Students must have a keen interest in medical education, curriculum design, assessment pedagogy, and skills assessment. This project is designed around assessment of the BVSc, but the outcomes are easily applicable to many other disciples within the health sciences and beyond. There is tremendous opportunity for collaborative and inter-disciplinary translation of this work. Candidates from education, medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry, nursing, or midwifery would all find significant overlap between our respective disciplines and all are welcome to contact our research team.

    Depending on the interest of a candidate, aspects of this project may be suitable for a masters-level degree or may be considered suitable for PhD-level research for the right canditate.

  • Medical training has evolved over recent decades to include an increased reliance on models and simulation for teaching and learning. The reasons for this are multifacited, but include movement away from live-patient/animal practice, decreased learning stress, and ability to easily revise material independent of patient load. There is a robust body of literature describing the use of models for training and learning. However, the literature describing the use of models for assessment of technical skills is lean at best.

    This project aims to evaluate and validate certain models for both the learning and assessment of techinical skills. Our hypothesis is that assessment of some technical skills on models will be equivalent to that of assessing the skills on a live patient. We expect that the benefits on student stress, additional opportunities for assessment, and decreased animal use will result in overall greater satisfaction of student learning and better attainment of program learning objectives.

    Models and simulation are commonly employed in the teaching of all health sciences. Candidates from medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy, and midwifery (to name a few) are welcome to contact our research group.

  • The concept of the Relationship Centred Practice is well-established in the field of the human health-sciences. However this concept is infrequently encountered in the veterinary setting. Beginning in 2021, the veterinary teaching hospital has begun a transition to RCP as our healthcare delivery model. At the same time, several of our internal rotations were merged to create a longitudinal integrated clinical clerkship. This project aims to investigate the outcomes of this shift in teaching delivery and practice organisation on the program outcomes of our Bachelor of Veterinary Science(Hons) students and the veterinary teaching hospital. There are a number of projects that can be considered as a part of this larger body of work. Given the translational nature of this project, we welcome interest from candidates in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry, and midwifery.

View all Available Projects

Publications

Journal Article

Conference Publication

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • Graduates of the BVSc are considered "practice ready" for licensure in Australia. In order to ensure that students have met the program learning objectives and can demonstrate the requisite technical skills, clinical skills, and knowledge base the School of Veterinary Science re-designed our assessment format and instituted a new "capstone" examination administered to all students at the end of their clinical year. This project aims to investigate the performance of the assessment, student and staff opinions about the new assessment structure, and impacts of this assessment on the students and curriculum.

    Students must have a keen interest in medical education, curriculum design, assessment pedagogy, and skills assessment. This project is designed around assessment of the BVSc, but the outcomes are easily applicable to many other disciples within the health sciences and beyond. There is tremendous opportunity for collaborative and inter-disciplinary translation of this work. Candidates from education, medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry, nursing, or midwifery would all find significant overlap between our respective disciplines and all are welcome to contact our research team.

    Depending on the interest of a candidate, aspects of this project may be suitable for a masters-level degree or may be considered suitable for PhD-level research for the right canditate.

  • Medical training has evolved over recent decades to include an increased reliance on models and simulation for teaching and learning. The reasons for this are multifacited, but include movement away from live-patient/animal practice, decreased learning stress, and ability to easily revise material independent of patient load. There is a robust body of literature describing the use of models for training and learning. However, the literature describing the use of models for assessment of technical skills is lean at best.

    This project aims to evaluate and validate certain models for both the learning and assessment of techinical skills. Our hypothesis is that assessment of some technical skills on models will be equivalent to that of assessing the skills on a live patient. We expect that the benefits on student stress, additional opportunities for assessment, and decreased animal use will result in overall greater satisfaction of student learning and better attainment of program learning objectives.

    Models and simulation are commonly employed in the teaching of all health sciences. Candidates from medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy, and midwifery (to name a few) are welcome to contact our research group.

  • The concept of the Relationship Centred Practice is well-established in the field of the human health-sciences. However this concept is infrequently encountered in the veterinary setting. Beginning in 2021, the veterinary teaching hospital has begun a transition to RCP as our healthcare delivery model. At the same time, several of our internal rotations were merged to create a longitudinal integrated clinical clerkship. This project aims to investigate the outcomes of this shift in teaching delivery and practice organisation on the program outcomes of our Bachelor of Veterinary Science(Hons) students and the veterinary teaching hospital. There are a number of projects that can be considered as a part of this larger body of work. Given the translational nature of this project, we welcome interest from candidates in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry, and midwifery.