The Development of Excellence in Pharmaceutical Knowledge: New Curriculum for the B.Sc. (Pharmacy) Studies
Keywords:
Curriculum, Life-long learning, Metacognitive skills, Motivation, Pharmacy educationAbstract
Reflective action is an important factor in the learning process and life-long learning. Enhancing the development of students’ metacognitive skills should be an important goal in the implementation of pharmacy education. In Finland, a new curriculum for B.Sc. (Pharmacy) studies was designed to meet the expectations of working life and form a solid base for the development of pharmaceutical expertise and life-long learning. The new curriculum was especially aimed at integrating theoretical knowledge with practice and fostering students’ learning and deep-level under- standing. The selection criteria of the students and the structure of the curriculum were developed from the traditional curriculum. The active role of the students was increased with different learning tasks. This follow-up study was designed to evaluate the success- fulness of the new curriculum and to explore students’ expectations and realization of them during their studies. As a whole, the implementation of the new curriculum succeeded well. The results, however, clearly indicated that certain areas should be developed further. Attention should be paid as to how to promote the active role and motivation of students. Only by understanding the multiple dimensions of learning and teaching and by seeing the university teaching as a holistic phenomenon can it be possible to increase the quality of higher education and produce pharmacy experts who are likely to succeed in and act as active developers of the ever-changing working life.
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