From Interesting to Impactful: Structuring CBL for Lasting Clinical Skills
If you’ve been teaching in veterinary education for a while, you’ve probably used Case-Based Learning (CBL) to liven up a lecture or spark discussion. Maybe you pulled a case from your own practice—something unusual, or one that really stuck with you—and used it to illustrate a clinical point.
Those moments are great for engagement. Without structure, though, those “great cases” can remain as one-off experiences. Students enjoy them in the moment, yet the learning doesn’t always stick or connect to the bigger picture of clinical readiness.
Over the years, we’ve found that CBL has the potential to be so much more. With intentional design, it becomes a long-term learning tool—building reasoning skills, reinforcing competencies, and giving students the kind of practice that translates directly into real-world confidence.
Why Structure Makes the Difference
When cases are planned with clear learning objectives and mapped to CBVE competencies and EPA outcomes, they shift from “a cool case” to a targeted, purposeful learning experience.
A structured case can:
Build complexity over time so students move from basics to advanced thinking.
Strengthen clinical communication by weaving in client conversations and team dynamics.
Improve retention by connecting concepts across multiple cases and courses.
It becomes less about telling a story and more about giving students a framework they can carry into their clinical years—and their careers.
A Few Tips for Designing Stronger CBL
Here’s what’s worked for us and other colleagues:
Start with the goal, not the case
Decide what skills or competencies you want students to practice—diagnostic reasoning, client communication, ethical decision-making—before choosing your case.Reveal it in layers
Present the case in stages: history, exam findings, diagnostic results, updates. This mirrors how cases unfold in practice and keeps students engaged.Embrace a little uncertainty
Include incomplete information or ambiguous results to get students comfortable making decisions without every answer in front of them.Connect the dots
Link cases to what’s come before, and set them up to be referenced again later. It helps students see the bigger clinical picture.
Beyond the Classroom
The best part of structured CBL is that students don’t just “remember the case”—they remember how they thought through it. They start recognizing patterns, asking better questions, and applying the same reasoning to new patients in clinics.
That’s when we know CBL has done its job.
If you’re looking to make your CBL cases more structured—or adapt them into dynamic online modules—send us a note here: contact us. We’re always happy to share ideas and swap case stories.
