Recognizing Innovations in Teaching Each year, the AACP Council of Faculties recognizes the novel teaching, learning strategies and assessment methods of three faculty teams as part of the Innovations in Teaching competition. This year’s winners will participate in a special session at the 2010 AACP Annual Meeting and Seminars in Seattle, Wash. on Tuesday, July 13 at 8:00 a.m. The award-winning programs are: The Pharmacy Curricula Vidcasting Project was designed by Dr. Seena L. Haines of Palm Beach Atlantic University Lloyd L. Gregory School of Pharmacy and Dr. Jenny A. Van Amburgh of Northeastern University School of Pharmacy. This vidcasting project was a collaborative between two private universities in two distinct courses. The project spanned a semester (16-weeks) in the fall (2008 and 2009) of the third professional year in the disease prevention and health promotion course at Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBAU) and the spring of the second professional year in the self-care therapeutics course at Northeastern University School of Pharmacy (NU-SOP). Components of this assignment include: developing a treatment, storyboard, electronic documentation log, filming, editing, presentation with debriefing, rubric-based assessment and peer/ student evaluations. Equipment necessary for filming was provided by our respective media departments. The course concluded with an awards ceremony honoring superlative recipients and the top three YouTube videos released on the public domain and internal PBAU/NU-SOP Web pages, TV stations, and the Palm Beach County digital square. Formative and summative assessments were implemented to evaluate student and community reactions, peer assessment, visibility and ratings by Internet users, and attribution of usage by other organizations. This process can be adapted to any course in any professional year and numerous health curricula, as well as serve as an ideal project within an interdisciplinary course. Results indicate increased student selfesteem, respect for peers, creative and critical thinking abilities.
Defining a Learning Process for Strengths Education in Pharmacy: An Eight Year Journey was designed by Dr. Kristin K. Janke from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy–Twin Cities campus, Dr. Andrew P. Traynor from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy–Duluth campus and Dr. Todd D. Sorensen from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy–Twin Cities campus. Research has shown that a high level of engagement in work is critical for creating innovation and success within an organization. Through the work of Gallup, this type of engagement has been clearly linked to alignment between an individual’s talents and strengths, and the work they do each day. The StrengthsFinder™ assessment tool was developed to assist individuals describe their talents and define their unique strengths, which are activities tied to Signature Themes of talent that make a person feel strong. For pharmacy to achieve its potential in serving patients and society, we must identify and productively engage the strengths of each pharmacist. We have applied lessons from the “strengths revolution” to the development of a learning framework com-
prised of three competency levels defined across a 5-stages of content. This framework has been used to develop instructional programs for multiple audiences of learners. Nearly 600 pharmacists and student pharmacists have completed the StrengthsFinder™ assessment and participated in live or Web-based programs that assist in translating general strengths principles into a pharmacy context. Evaluations have demonstrated an enhanced understanding of personal strengths and an ability to identify areas for personal development. Learning strategies developed based on years of experience are well-received and shown to assist learners in achieving defined competencies. This success is supporting integration of “strengths” curricular thread, which will engage all students at our institution. This work is also serving as a key point of engagement between the school and the local pharmacy community.
Learning Bridge: An Integrative Tool that Bridges Didactic and Experiential Curricula to Positively Affect Student Learning, Preceptor Training, and Faculty Teamwork was conducted by Dr. Reza Karimi, Dr. Pauline A. Cawley and Dr. Cassandra S. Arendt, all from the Pacific University Oregon School of Pharmacy. A Learning Bridge (LB) has been developed to assist the School of Pharmacy’s first professional year (P1) students in integrating P1 didactic learning with introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPE). Thirteen LB assignments were designed based on biomedical, pharmaceutical and social/behavioral/administrative sciences during the 2008–2009 academic year. These assignments were pharmacy related and designed to be completed at a pharmacy site, requiring students to be self-directed and use site-accessible tools to answer questions relating to the didactic materials covered concurrently within the P1 year. Each assignment was shared with students and preceptors prior to biweekly IPPE days. At the conclusion of fall and spring semesters, the team conducted five surveys to collect students’, preceptors’ and faculty’s feedback to measure the effectiveness of the LB process. Our results provided compelling evidence that the LB process played an instrumental role in promoting students’ interaction with their preceptors, active learning, selfdirected learning and critical-thinking skills. In addition, preceptors believed that the LB process familiarized them with our P1 curriculum and assisted them in invigorating their knowledge of the curricular topics. Furthermore, faculty believed the dynamic of their teamwork was increased by generating LB assignments. Our results indicate that the LB process integrates didactic and experiential realms and the results were sufficiently encouraging to incorporate the LB process into our Pharm.D. curriculum.
academic Pharmacy now Apr/May/Jun 2010
19