Student Research
Linh Nguyen ’12 Student in the Doctor of Pharmacy Program
When Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences HaiAn Zheng, Ph.D., was a pharmacy student, he used diagrams and images to help learn his coursework. As a graduate student, computer modeling played an important part in his research initiatives. Now that he is a faculty member, Dr. Zheng continues to explore different multimedia tools to help students learn complex pharmacy-related topics, and fifth year pharmacy student Linh Nguyen plays a key role in these efforts. For the last three years, Linh has worked with Dr. Zheng to integrate visual aids into his classes through the “Pharmaceutics in Mo-
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tion” project. At first, Linh created animations for molecular structures and processes like osmosis, supplementing traditional text-based materials. Based on positive feedback from students, Dr. Zheng and Linh created and sought out additional multimedia elements such as molecular modeling, video, and computer simulations to be used for the class. Survey results of students have confirmed that Linh and Zheng’s multi-media presentations have greatly helped in understanding the physical, chemical, and biological principles of drug delivery and product preparation. In fact, the results have been so encouraging, that Dr. Zheng and Linh (along with Xun Gong,
Luciana Lopes, and Judy Teng) were invited to present their results at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) in 2010. As the world continues to advance into the digital realm and web sites like YouTube increase in popularity, students are becoming increasingly accustomed to acquiring information through visual and auditory stimuli. The work being done by Dr. Zheng and Linh through Pharmaceutics in Motion may point the way to a new way of teaching and learning pharmaceutics in the 21st century.