Animal experimentation in transgenesis: evaluating course design in large classrooms

Teachers are guided by an ethical code of conduct. Teacher behavior can be perceived as normative and can set standards; for example, in the field of animal experimentation. The importance of ethical standards raises the question of its transmission. This survey addressed the relevance of using large amphitheater teaching groups to educate students on the ethical aspects of animal experimentation. A course was built to include interactivity sequences to gather feedback from students about moral dilemmas or assertions about animal experimentation. To that end, surveys were conducted on third‐year students, prior to the course, shortly after the course and at the end of the academic year. Students were asked to indicate whether the experimental protocols were satisfactory. Before the course, few students reported ethical dimensions in the proposed protocols; animals were considered scientific objects, not sentient beings. The situation was noticeably different for students on courses with an emphasis on the animal as the unit of study. Although large classrooms are not considered to be relevant places to question ethical issues, the proportion of students discussing ethical aspects of protocols increased shortly after the lecture, and this increased at the end of the academic year. These observations suggest that the effect of teaching on ethical considerations was sustainable despite the lectures being performed in a large classroom.