Team Based Learning: Preparing pharmacy students for an integrated curriculum during induction
Keywords:
Team Based Learning, Integrated Curriculum, InductionAbstract
Background: Pharmacy students have to integrate their science and practice learning and be able to apply it in practical situations. Integrating knowledge and skills from diverse disciplines can be a challenge and supporting students in this was a priority for the school. Team Based Learning (TBL) has been used as an active learning strategy to promote a supportive learning environment where students work in small groups to solve case-based problems.
Aims: The aim was to describe how TBL was introduced to students during their induction and to describe the student response.
Method: The first year of the undergraduate pharmacy programme started with a week-long induction comprising four TBL sessions, designed in part to set out the expectation of integrating pharmaceutical science and pharmacy practice knowledge and introducing the Code of Conduct for pharmacy students. The student experience of TBL was determined using an online survey and the marks students achieved in the assessments.
Results: The students’ individual assessment means were 72%, 80% and 49%, whilst the team means were 96%, 97% and 74%. Five themes emerged from the students comments on TBL which were: comfort, how TBL helped learning, assessing too early in the programme, preparation time and having the opportunity to meet others on the programme.
Conclusion: The students responded positively to TBL in the induction. The TBL sessions set the expectation of pre-learning/preparation for all teaching sessions and science-practice integration throughout the programme. TBL also allowed students to engage with a greater number of their peers than would have been possible with more didactic forms of teaching.
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