Abstract
Given changes in the final year pharmacotherapy unit structure and calendar, along with a need to introduce assessments to encourage critical thinking, it was decided that online debates of therapeutic controversies would be beneficial. The primary objective was to assess the impact of teaching strategies on the development of argumentation skills and informal reasoning in pharmacy students. Students were provided with an introduction to argumentation followed by two formal debates, with feedback provided in between. Four debate groups were randomly selected for evaluation. In debate one, all groups posted one argument and all arguments were rationalistic and ranked as Level 3. For debate two, a total of 33 arguments were evaluated, with an overall median ranking of Level 2. Again, all debates were categorised as rationalistic. In general, students felt there was too much workload associated with the assignment. Changes in the future include providing the debates in patient scenarios to increase practical applicability.
Highlights
Context: Pharmacotherapy teaching at Curtin University has traditionally involved the lecture and tutorial format common to most units
The adoption of a blended learning environment was necessary in light of administrative and logistical changes to the fourth year pharmacy calendar
In conjunction with the fourth year coordinator and other pharmacotherapy lecturers, to implement an online component in order to reduce the number of face-to-face tutorials in the six weeks of time spent on campus
Summary
Context: Pharmacotherapy teaching at Curtin University has traditionally involved the lecture and tutorial format common to most units. The tutorials are meant to consolidate learning from the lectures by putting them in the context of patient cases. Little change from this model of teaching pharmacotherapy has been made over the last number of years. In Semester 1, 2011, fourth year students were only going to be on campus for six weeks of term. The constriction of face-to-face time led to reconsidering how the Pharmacotherapy unit could be better delivered It was decided, in conjunction with the fourth year coordinator and other pharmacotherapy lecturers, to implement an online component in order to reduce the number of face-to-face tutorials in the six weeks of time spent on campus
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