Toxicology Course Research Articles

Development of Digital Modules in the Environmental Toxicology Course at the Undergraduate Level in the Biology Program Study

The need for digital modules is required in the implementation of distance learning. This study aims to develop a digital module in “environmental toxicology” lectures at the undergraduate level of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Education. The existence of this digital module can support the implementation of the Independent Learning Program - Independent Campus (MBKM) in the FPMIPA. The method used in this study was a case study with a descriptive approach. Learning media was developed through the ADDIE approach, which consists of 5 stages: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. This study involved two experts as digital module validators and 10 students involved in learning environmental toxicology through learning management system (LMS). At the end of the implementation, students were evaluated to determine the level of student understanding during the online independent learning process. The results of this development were in the form of a digitating of 14 meeting materials, mid-term; final exam; content on the SPADA-UPI Learning Management System; and IPR Digital Module Innovation. Based on the validation and reared validation and readability test results, digital modules can be used to support online learning of environmental toxicology. Keywords: digital modules, environmental toxicology, biology program study

The Influence of Mode of Instruction (Recorded Versus In-Person Lecture) on Student Achievement on Written Examinations in a Veterinary Clinical Toxicology Course

The use of recorded on-line lecture presentation has increased in recent years in veterinary medical education. The effects of recorded on-line lectures on student knowledge acquisition are incompletely studied and there is very little information specifically addressing veterinary medical students. We studied the written examination performance of 373 third-year students spanning 4 calendar years (2017–2019, 2022) enrolled in a veterinary toxicology course which were exposed to either in-person lectures or recorded lectures of the exact same material. There was no difference in overall examination performance for students receiving on-line instruction compared to in-person lectures from the same instructor and instructional materials ( p = .254). However, students receiving in-person lectures compared to those that received recorded lectures demonstrated improved performance on exact matching questions (92.9% vs. 81.8%, respectively; p < .001). This study contributes to the limited body of knowledge regarding didactic instructional methodology in veterinary medicine. Further and more detailed studies are warranted to ensure optimal methods are employed in veterinary student instruction.

Community-engaged learning to broaden the impact of applied ecology: A case study.

Ecological changes are creating disruptions that often disproportionately impact communities of color and economically disadvantaged areas. Scientists who study the consequences experienced by these communities are uniquely suited to bring the public into their work as a way of setting conditions that enable impacted residents to empower themselves to advance environmental and community change. In addition to involving community stakeholders in the process of science, community science can be used to motivate learning and increase engagement of students. Here we highlight a case study of one way a historically Black college involved local communities and students in water quality monitoring efforts to examine the role of the environment in human health. Students in an introductory-level environmental toxicology course collaborated with community members to track pollution and monitor conditions in an urban, impaired stream. Students participated in bi-monthly water quality monitoring alongside community watershed researchers and an annual day-long multisite sampling event with community residents and organizations. Through this engagement, students and community members contributed to the collection of data, learned about the significance of their results, and translated findings into strategies to advance watershed restoration, health, quality of life, and environmental justice goals.

Preclinical and Clinical Medical Students' Perception of the Learning Environment: A Reference to the Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology Course.

PurposeUnderstanding learning environments is vital for developing curricula. This study aims to evaluate medical students’ achievements and perception of learning environments considering the Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology course as an analog for the curricular transition process.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate medical students at the Faculty of Medicine, Tanta University, from August 2020 to October 2021. Using the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) questionnaire, the perception of 621 students (of which 307 were enrolled in the integrated curriculum and 314 in the traditional curriculum) were compared. Furthermore, the appropriate tests of significance and correlations were used to compare students’ perception according to their enrollment, age, gender, and previous year grade point average.ResultsThe mean overall DREEM score was 121.04 ± 22.35, implying a more positive than negative learning environment, that is, a more positive learning perception, with students’ perceptions of teachers moving in the right direction, students’ academic self-perceptions getting more on the positive side, more positive attitudes regarding student’s perceptions of the learning environment, and not-too-bad student’s social self-perception. Medical students enrolled in the integrated curriculum showed higher DREEM scores, with significantly better learning and academic self-perceptions (p < 0.05). Knowledgeable, qualified faculties are the most significant characteristic feature in both systems. A significant number of students achieved excellent grades in the integrated curriculum (n = 740 out of 1076, 68.8%) than in the traditional one (n = 470 out of 961, 48.9%) (p < 0.0001).ConclusionThis study revealed a smooth, successful transition from the traditional to integrated curriculum among Egyptian medical students. The main areas for improvements are focusing on factual teaching, implementing student-centered teaching activities, promoting students’ memorizing, and engaging students in activities that may help them enjoy learning.

Management of Poisoned Patients: Implementing a Blended Toxicology Curriculum for Emergency Medicine Residents.

Management of Poisoned Patients: Implementing a Blended Toxicology Curriculum for Emergency Medicine Residents.

Pick Your Poison: A Semester-Long Case Study for Undergraduate Toxicology

The ability to collate information from diverse scientific resources and effectively employ scientific writing is an essential skill for scientists. This lesson describes a semester-long project entitled &ldquo;Pick Your Poison,&rdquo; which is designed for use in a one-semester Toxicology course. Students are each assigned to or choose their own individual toxicant as a case study from a pre-selected list of toxicants (poisons) that align with the theme of the course. As content is covered in the course, students complete ten scaffolded, low-stakes writing modules that are shared with groupmates of 4&ndash;5 students. Each module covers a major feature of the toxicant, such as chemical features, characteristics of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME), and organ-specific toxicities. Students share their work with their group mates and the instructor, peer review one another&rsquo;s work, and then edit their original post as appropriate to produce a concise, 3&ndash;4 paragraph product. At the end of the course, students compile their writing modules into an article in the format of the Encyclopedia of Toxicology. This project can be adapted to any toxicology course through alteration of the content and number of modules and/or the type of final deliverable. Several evidence-based and inclusive teaching practices are included, such as writing-to-learn, peer review, and low-stakes assessments. <em>Primary Image:</em>&nbsp;A picture of the online discussions for two of the ten modules.

A Case Study for Teaching Toxicology: Using Whales as an Indicator for Environmental Health.

One of the challenges of teaching scientific courses is helping students understand research methods, biological models, and data analysis, which can be especially difficult in classes without a laboratory component. Within the field of toxicology, it is also important for students to understand how living organisms are affected by exposure to toxicants and how these toxicants can impact the ecosystem. Resources focusing on active learning pedagogy are scarce in the field of toxicology compared to other disciplines. In this activity, upper-level students in an introductory toxicology course learn to interpret data from primary literature, draw conclusions about how toxicants, specifically metals, can impact susceptible populations, and understand the One Environmental Health approach. Students work in small groups to answer questions concerning data from a paper and then share their responses with the entire class building their communication skills. The instructor serves as a moderator, allowing the students to work through concepts, intervening only when necessary. This approach enables a deeper level of understanding of content and allows the students to engage actively in the learning process. As such, students think critically through relevant problems and find connections to the real world. This lesson can be adapted for several levels of students and could be modified depending on the objectives of the course.

Effect of Delivery Format on Student Outcomes and Perceptions of a Veterinary Medicine Course: Synchronous versus Asynchronous Learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted instruction at many veterinary schools to switch to an emergency remote teaching format to prevent viral transmission associated with in-person synchronous lectures. This study surveyed student perspectives and academic performance in a pre-planned online second-year veterinary toxicology course given at North Carolina State University in Spring 2020. This course relied on asynchronous narrated presentations for content delivery. This method of delivery predated the pandemic and was used throughout the course. Academic performance and patterns of access to materials in the online course was compared with the access patterns and performance of students given classroom-based synchronous teaching in Spring 2019. Assessments evaluated in this study were identical across courses. Students’ academic performance was unaffected by delivery method. Lack of instructor interaction was an important perceived barrier in the asynchronous course. Asynchronous course materials were uniformly accessed across all days of the week, while supplemental materials for the face-to-face course showed a weekly pattern. Moving from letter grades to pass/fail did not change access frequency to supplemental course materials but led to decreased video usage in the asynchronous course. Results suggest that although some veterinary students perceived the switch in delivery format negatively, the method of delivery did not adversely affect performance in this preclinical course.

Assessing scientific literacy skill perceptions and practical capabilities in fourth year undergraduate biological science students

In a fourth year undergraduate nutritional toxicology course that included an instructional emphasis on scientific literature critique activities and assessments, we determined the change in students’ (n=144) scientific literacy (SL) skills. The change in students’ perceived and practical SL skills were determined by the completion of two surveys, administered at the start and end of the semester. Additionally, we conducted a follow-up SL survey at the end of the subsequent academic semester (i.e., four months later) to determine if students retained any improvements in their SL skills. Over the semester, students showed improvements in their perceived capabilities of all SL skill parameters assessed (P&lt;0.05); however, the most significant gains were apparent in the areas of i) knowledge application (specifically identifying novel problems or research questions and using new information to address unfamiliar problems or knowledge gaps), and ii) knowledge translation and communication (translating complex information from the scientific literature into clear and understandable terms). There was no change in students TOSLS score between the start and end of the semester (P&gt;0.05). In the follow-up SL survey students showed further improvements in their perceptions of the SL skills for 7 or the 10 parameters assessed compared to the end of the previous semester (P&lt;0.05), however, there remained no change in their practical SL skills assessed using TOSLS. Collectively, these data demonstrate that students’ perceptions of their SL capabilities may not align with their practical capabilities.

Crossing Floors: Developing an Interdisciplinary CURE between an Environmental Toxicology Course and an Analytical Chemistry Course

We designed a collaborative course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) between an Analytical Chemistry course and an Environmental Toxicology course to engage students in a research project that cannot rely on one discipline alone. This study reports on 47 students’ self-reported experiences with the course outcomes and their opinions of the CURE project. Students in both courses increased their levels of experience in skills related to the CURE project, including their ability to design a project where the outcome was unknown. Further, most students felt a sense of project ownership, but their ownership was attributed only to the positive aspects of the CURE. At the end of the CURE, the students in both classes demonstrated the ability to connect ideas and techniques learned in the course to a broader environmental research question. We also suggest several tips for developing collaborative CUREs in undergraduate courses.

Using Instructional Media to Improve Student Learning Outcomes in an Online Toxicology Course - a Case Study

Using Instructional Media to Improve Student Learning Outcomes in an Online Toxicology Course - a Case Study

Comparing Item Performance on Three- Versus Four-Option Multiple Choice Questions in a Veterinary Toxicology Course.

Background: The number of answer options is an important element of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Many MCQs contain four or more options despite the limited literature suggesting that there is little to no benefit beyond three options. The purpose of this study was to evaluate item performance on 3-option versus 4-option MCQs used in a core curriculum course in veterinary toxicology at a large veterinary medical school in the United States. Methods: A quasi-experimental, crossover design was used in which students in each class were randomly assigned to take one of two versions (A or B) of two major exams. Results: Both the 3-option and 4-option MCQs resulted in similar psychometric properties. Conclusion: The findings of our study support earlier research in other medical disciplines and settings that likewise concluded there was no significant change in the psychometric properties of three option MCQs when compared to the traditional MCQs with four or more options.

Discussion on the application of debate based teaching in food toxicology course

Objective To explore the application effect of debate teaching in food toxicology teach-ing. Methods Taking the chapter of mutagenic effect of exogenous chemicals in the course of food toxi-cology as an example, totally hygiene quarantine specialty undergraduate students from March 2015 to July 2016 in our school for the course of Grade 2014 (n=37), Grade 2013 (n=49) were selected as subjects and conducted debate teaching and traditional teaching comparison. The students of Grade 2014 took the tradi-tional teaching method as the control group, while the students of Grade 2013 took the debate teaching method as the experimental group. After the teaching of two groups, quizzes were used to evaluate the stu-dents' learning of this course. In addition, the students in the debate teaching group were investigated by the questionnaire of the students' satisfaction with the teaching method and the learning performance of the stu-dents in the teaching practice at the end of the quiz. T test was conducted on the test scores of two groups of students by SPSS 16.0. Results The average test score of the students in the experimental group was high-er than that of the control group [(7.24±0.66) vs. (6.35±0.82), t=5.575, P=0.000]. 49 questionnaires were is-sued to the students in the experimental group, and 49 valid questionnaires were recovered. The ma-jority of students believed that the debate teaching method aroused their interest in the course of learning and en-hanced their abilities and qualities. Conclusions The application of debate teaching in food toxicol-ogy teaching has good effect, and it can train students' comprehensive ability. Key words: Debating teaching; Food toxicity; Teaching effectiveness

Teaching Tip: Improving Students' Email Communication through an Integrated Writing Assignment in a Third-Year Toxicology Course

Client communication is important for success in veterinary practice, with written communication being an important means for veterinarian-client information sharing. Effective communication is adapted to clients' needs and wants, and presents information in a clear, understandable manner while accounting for varying degrees of client health literacy. This teaching tip describes the use of a mock electronic mail assignment as one way to integrate writing into a required veterinary toxicology course. As part of this project, we provide baseline data relating to students' written communication that will guide further development of writing modules in other curricula. Two independent raters analyzed students' writing using a coding scheme designed to assess adherence to the guidelines for effective written health communication. Results showed that the majority of students performed satisfactorily or required some development with respect to recommended guidelines for effective written health communication to facilitate client understanding. These findings suggest that additional instruction and practice should emphasize the importance of incorporating examples, metaphors, analogies, and pictures to create texts that are comprehensible and memorable to clients. Recommendations are provided for effective integration of writing assignments into the veterinary medicine curriculum.

Implementing an elective toxicology course through integration of emergency medicine resident physicians into didactic lectures

ObjectivesTo design, implement, and evaluate an elective clinical toxicology course through the integration of emergency medicine physicians into case-based lectures to pharmacy students. DesignAn introductory clinical toxicology course with an emphasis on overdose prevention, overdose patient diagnosis/assessment, and general medical management approaches was developed. Interprofessional interaction opportunity for pharmacy students was provided through integration of emergency medicine resident physicians into didactic lectures. Case-based lectures were created and delivered throughout the course to illustrate the application of the general toxicology knowledge to patient care. AssessmentThe outcome of the course design and implementation were assessed through students’ self-assessment survey, standard course evaluation, and overall course grades from class students. ConclusionStudents perceived the integration of emergency medicine resident physicians as beneficial. The course design promoted students to value different viewpoints, and the method of content delivery helped them to develop real world professional skills through interprofessional interactions. The course survey, evaluations, and overall course grades demonstrated that the course met its predefined educational outcome.

Development of a Medical Toxicology Curriculum in Spanish with Content Informed by a Population Survey for Medical Trainees in the Dominican Republic

Introduction: The aim of this study is to develop a curriculum based on the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) core content toxicology category with emphasis on exposures prevalent in the Dominican Republic (DR) as informed by a population survey. Methods: A survey was designed to identify common toxicological exposures, practices, and perceptions in community members and medical trainees in Santiago, DR. A toxicology curriculum was taught to medical residents using a curriculum made available online through the Global Educational Toxicology Uniting Project (GETUP). Results: 175 people completed the survey and 34 medical residents completed the course. The average percent of students/residents and community members reported the following, respectively: frequent substance abuse (12.2%, 44.0%), safe storage practices (21.7%, 13.7%), and traditional remedy use (15.2%, 21.8%). Community members answered 44%, medical students answered 61%, and residents answered 73% of the basic knowledge questions correctly. The mean pretest and posttest scores in the medical residents who took the toxicology course were 61% and 83%, respectively. Conclusions: The results suggest this population would benefit from education regarding safe-storage practices, the potential dangers of traditional remedy use, as well as education on the sources and effects of common exposures like lead and pesticide poisoning. Many practice high risk behaviors including substance abuse, unsafe remedy use, as well as the use of products that are either illegal or improperly labeled/handled. The long-term goals of this project are to raise awareness and implement expanded toxicology training in this country.

Designing training for teaching environmental toxicology to specialized pharmacists

IntroductionThe Toxicology Unit at the University of Alcalá (Spain) started to provide a novel short-term training course in environmental toxicology for pharmacists enrolled in the postgraduate specialty “Specialist in Industrial Pharmacy and Galenicals” in 2013-2014. This specialty is only available to state-board certified pharmacists considering enrolling in a specialized health training program. ObjectiveThe objective was to create a short, dynamic, and interactive highly specialized training workshop to introduce future professionals to the subject of environmental toxicology and public health. The success of this novel short training course and the interest of the students in environmental toxicology were also analyzed. MethodsA specialized training workshop in environmental toxicology was developed for pharmacists who often have a limited knowledge of environmental health. The training workshop consisted of both theoretical and practical sessions. The practical exercise was highly dynamic and involved identifying potential human risks from pharmaceuticals and care products in water environments as well as the development of a protection and remediation strategy. ResultsFollowing successful training pharmacists demonstrated good understanding of the source-pathway-receptor model and were capable of tailoring strategies to protect human health and future generations. ConclusionsThe novel short training course was successful in developing postgraduate students’ knowledge of environmental toxicology by providing a practical introduction to environmental health. The methods described here may be used for designing longer training events or courses of environmental toxicology for pharmacists who wish to work in the industry.

A Fellow's perspective on the threatened closure of the Illinois Poison Center.

A Fellow's perspective on the threatened closure of the Illinois Poison Center.

Student Knowledge and Confidence in an Elective Clinical Toxicology Course Using Active-Learning Techniques

To measure changes in students' knowledge and confidence scores after completing an elective clinical toxicology course in an accelerated doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) program. Various active-learning techniques were used to create a learner-centered environment. Approximately two-thirds of the course used student-led presentations. Some of those not presenting were assigned to be evaluators, responsible for asking the presenter a question or writing quiz questions based on the presented material. Other learner-centered activities included weekly quizzes and discussions at the conclusion of each presented topic. A test instrument designed to measure students' knowledge and associated level of confidence on each item was administered at the beginning and end of the course. Students' knowledge and confidence scores increased significantly from pretest to posttest. Students' increased confidence and knowledge scores were well correlated after course completion, indicating students were better able to self-assess these areas. These findings suggest that confidence could be an additional measure of students' metacognitive skill development.

Student Preferences Regarding Teaching Methods in a Drug-Induced Diseases and Clinical Toxicology Course

To determine which teaching method in a drug-induced diseases and clinical toxicology course was preferred by students and whether their preference correlated with their learning of drug-induced diseases. Three teaching methods incorporating active-learning exercises were implemented. A survey instrument was developed to analyze students' perceptions of the active-learning methods used and how they compared to the traditional teaching method (lecture). Examination performance was then correlated to students' perceptions of various teaching methods. The majority of the 107 students who responded to the survey found traditional lecture significantly more helpful than active-learning methods (p=0.01 for all comparisons). None of the 3 active-learning methods were preferred over the others. No significant correlations were found between students' survey responses and examination performance. Students preferred traditional lecture to other instructional methods. Learning was not influenced by the teaching method or by preference for a teaching method.