{"id":23244,"date":"2024-04-05T11:11:41","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T15:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qa.vet.purdue.edu\/news\/?p=23244"},"modified":"2024-04-11T23:09:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T03:09:54","slug":"online-veterinary-nursing-distance-learning-program-continues-to-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/online-veterinary-nursing-distance-learning-program-continues-to-grow.php","title":{"rendered":"Online Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning Program Continues to Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning students benefit from hands-on skill development available through a summer workshop offered at Purdue to provide learning opportunities that may not be available through the students\u2019 clinical mentorships.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As one of the oldest online programs offered by Purdue \u2013 and currently the one with the largest enrollment \u2013 the Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning program, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, is undergoing an impressive rejuvenation. Several factors are driving the VNDL program\u2019s growth, from demand for educated veterinary technicians to a revamped battery of courses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carolyn Gauslow had been working in veterinary clinics for years when she decided that she really wanted to earn her veterinary technician\u2019s certification, something her employer, Companion Animal Specialty and Emergency Hospital in Crystal Lake, Illinois, encouraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauslow has a full-time job overnights in the clinic\u2019s intensive care unit, a husband and a son, plus two cats and a dog. She needed a program she could fit into a busy life. A veterinarian she works with pointed her to the longstanding Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning (VNDL) program<\/a> from the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine<\/a>. She researched the program and decided it was for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible but also be able to learn and grow as a veterinary professional,\u201d Gauslow said. \u201cPurdue really did that above and beyond. It was probably the best decision I could have made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having just reached its 25th<\/sup> anniversary this year, the VNDL program, now among the oldest online programs offered by Purdue \u2013 and currently the one with the largest enrollment \u2013 is experiencing an impressive rejuvenation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program\u2019s target for growth is 10% annually, but lately it has been seeing increases nearer 12%, and from spring semester 2023 to spring semester 2024, enrollment jumped 38%, from 452 to 624 students, said Josh Clark, MS, RVT, the VNDL program\u2019s assistant director. A decade ago, enrollment had fallen to around 100 students some semesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, retention of existing students has improved, nearly doubling from spring 2023 to spring 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clark said numerous factors are influencing the growth. One is that educated veterinary nursing professionals are in short supply. Demand for veterinary technicians<\/a> is projected to grow by 21% through 2032, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, there are just 10 fully online programs in the field across the country, and in 2023 Purdue was rated the top online program nationally by bestcolleges.org<\/a>. Graduates of Purdue\u2019s VNDL program have a 92.9% three-year average pass rate on the Veterinary Technician National Exam (VTNE\u00ae), the profession\u2019s standard certification examination, compared with a 68.7% three-year average nationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clark said it helps that instructors in the VNDL program are focused solely on online learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of our instructors are dedicated to teaching VNDL courses,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWe don’t have folks on our team who are teaching some on-campus courses and some online courses. I think that helps our instructors be better teachers. They’re passionate about online learning and they do a good job of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said a beefed up marketing program, particularly on social media, and expanded partnerships with large veterinary practices and organizations such as Ethos\/VetBloom and United Veterinary Care, as well as Huntington University, are additional factors in the growth of the VNDL program. In the partnership with Huntington University, students at Huntington can earn two degrees at once, a bachelor\u2019s in animal health from Huntington University and their VDNL degree from Purdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clark thinks the program also has benefitted from a \u201cpandemic effect.\u201d Students during the COVID-19 pandemic got used to online learning, found that it worked for them and, in some cases, that they preferred it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started seeing pretty good growth after the pandemic,\u201d Clark said. \u201cIt’s anecdotal but, talking with students, online learning became a lot more mainstream after the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That has resulted, among other things, in an uptick of students eschewing the on-campus program and enrolling in Purdue\u2019s online program after high school, which was rare previously, and a few students have even switched to online after starting on campus, which never happened before. Older adults going back to school for their certification or making a career change still make up the majority of the VNDL program\u2019s students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryker Parsell of Lafayette, who\u2019s in his fifth semester in the VNDL program, chose the fully online option even though he is on campus most days. He works at Purdue\u2019s Centrally Managed Animal Facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parsell, who also has worked at local animal shelters and clinics, felt that he needed to continue his education if, as planned, he\u2019s going to make a long-term career of working with animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI couldn’t really have a work schedule and an on-campus class schedule,\u201d Parsell said. \u201cIt was beneficial to be able to have a program where I could do it on my own time and have my own schedule and still be able to work whatever hours I needed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the growth trend, College of Veterinary Medicine leaders aren\u2019t satisfied with the status quo. The VNDL program is amid a major, multiyear makeover with assistance from the Course Production team of Purdue Teaching and Learning Technologies and Purdue University Online<\/a>. By the spring of 2025, all 27 of the program\u2019s didactic courses will have been redesigned and Clark said the plan going forward is to evaluate the courses for refreshing at least annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, students like what they see. Clark pointed to feedback from a group of students who took the old version of the Physiology 1 class one semester and the new version of the Physiology 2 class the following semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of the feedback we got from those students was very positive, he said. \u201cThe difference between the two courses was night and day. They very much liked the redesigned course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauslow, who graduated in May of 2023, has become an advocate of the VNDL program because of her experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy advisors were absolutely fantastic and all of the instructors for every single course were so hands-on,\u201d Gauslow said. \u201cThey were just as invested in my education as I was. It is such an incredible program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about Purdue\u2019s Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning program, visit the program\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the oldest online programs offered by Purdue \u2013 and currently the one with the largest enrollment \u2013 the Veterinary Nursing Distance Learning program, which celebrated its 20th birthday in 2023, is undergoing an impressive rejuvenation. From demand for educated veterinary technicians to a revamped battery of courses, several factors are driving the VNDL program\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,3,644],"tags":[56,25,252,802],"class_list":["post-23244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-vet-tech","category-veterinary-nursing","tag-homepage","tag-top-story","tag-veterinary-nursing","tag-veterinary-nursing-distance-learning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23244"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23271,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23244\/revisions\/23271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}