Abstract:

The teaching process is dynamic and requires the active involvement of both the teacher and the students. From a rigid, authoritarian and mostly constraint-based system, the evolution of nowadays educational system must be based on the wishes and expectations of both involved actors. Without limiting in any way the rights and requirements of teachers, a constant assessment of the rights and obligations of students is the basic premise of an adequate training of the future specialists. Undoubtedly, their expectations from the higher education system may be varied, some of them even unrealistic in terms of their youth. Under the maturity filter of the evaluating teacher, the students' expectations are important to be known, creating the premises for the didactic evolution through continuous adaptation, including the continuous adjusting of the teaching methods.

In this context, our study aimed to apply a survey to the first year students of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Iasi, belonging to three consecutive series (2019, 2020, 2021). Through the 10 questions contained in the applied questionnaire, we desired to identify some of the preferences of the 370 students who wished to participate in the survey on how they spend their time, their learning methods, their motivation to become a veterinarian, their conceptualization of the ideal life, and some personal requirements regarding the qualities of an ideal teacher or of an ideal course. The centralized results showed a higher share of women respondents, and of those from urban areas.

The majority of respondents believed that the most important goal in life is to be honest, and fewer of them considered other ideals, such as to be rich or famous. Regarding the veterinarian career, the most of them believed that a veterinarian should equally respect people and animals, and not disproportionate in one direction or another. Although many of them reported that they better learn through writing, most respondents defined an ideal lecture as a predominantly visual one. For most students included in this survey, the ideal teacher should use its acting skills, which reveals the impact of the teacher's personality on how students perceive the subject taught.

Keywords:

Veterinarian students, teaching, learning, lectures.