Bridging the gap from classroom to practice: PBL students develop consumer website for nonprescription drugs

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education,  Winter 2000  by Sibbald, Debra

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Successful communication with consumers to enable understanding and advise the safe use of nonprescription drugs will need to include the Internet as an information source. Utilizing the Web as a learning tool is a skill that can be acquired in a self-directed problem-based learning setting. This article describes a class project that involved student teams developing an Internet website for consumers which provides a bridge applying content and skills learned in the classroom directly to the patient. Students were successful in using creative and analytical skills to provide and clarify large amounts of information to assist patients in making informed choices and to provide students and pharmacists with a foundation of knowledge from which they can counsel patients concerning the use of nonprescription drugs with confidence and accuracy.

INTRODUCTION

Universal accessibility to Internet resources explaining mild or self-limiting medical conditions and drugs for self-medication has created a dilemma for the consumer in ascertaining the credibility of these references. The mission statement for pharmaceutical education at the University of Toronto directs course structure with activities involving clinical judgement, decision making and problem solving, enabling students to learn knowledge, skills and values necessary to meet drugrelated needs of patients in society(l). The two second and third year nonprescription drug courses, titled Pharmaceutical Care, embrace this patient-centred model of practice. In keeping with this philosophy and aspiring to a leadership initiative in providing the public with accurate information concerning drug therapy, an effort to develop a valid and reliable consumer website for nonprescription drugs prepared by students was undertaken. This project would also serve students as an interactive educational tool that enables asynchronous problembased learning.

COURSE INFORMATION

Two previous manuscripts described two nonprescription medication courses for large classes of 140 students at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. These courses prepare students to practice pharmaceutical care using problem-based, student-directed learning. The first paper examined fostering an interactive, motivating environment during the first three years of evolution and outlines course design, teaching methodology, reinforcing and enabling strategies, case preparation, assessment tools, evaluations and examinations(2). A second paper reviewed the oral clinical skills examination, which uses standardized patients(3). An integral part of the innovative course format (AACP Innovations in Teaching Award, 1998) was the development of course-specific websites as an infrastructure for facilitated asynchronous learning (http://djs.phm.utoronto.ca).

COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING IN HEALTH CARE

As communication and knowledge is transformed by technology, computer assisted instruction has begun its own revolution(4). Two models of computing in education worth reviewing are the Telelearning Network of Centers of Excellence (http://www.telelearn.ca) and the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (http://cilt.org/html). Accessing the home pages of these sites will permit links to a variety of interactive computer learning tools and projects: the Telelearning Network has a variety of postsecondary options available, and the CILT has a number of assessment and visualization projects ongoing. A variety of leading researchers, including Ron Baecker, (whose team is working on CineKit) Maria Klawe, (working on E-GEMS) and Rick Goldman-Segal (working on Web Constellations) believe that students have an affinity for multimedia as a means of self-directed learning. Within health care education and in particular, education of pharmacy students, the literature is increasingly inundated with examples of computer-assisted learning as an important enabling strategy as compared to traditional methods(2,5-12). The development of theories of learning using computers in education has embraced four paradigms: behaviourist (e.g., programmed instruction), information processing theory (e.g., interactive one-on-one tutorials), cognitive constructivist (e.g., discoverybased learning) and socially oriented theories of learning (e.g., collaborative learning). For four years, computer technology has been developed and refined in these two nonprescription drug courses to assist self-directed learning, using either interactive tutorial, discovery-based or collaborative learning models. The consumer website project, is also a composite of discovery-based and collaborative learning which is achieved through online instruction.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: COURSE WEBSITES EVOLUTION

Year One: Fall 1997. Two course-specific websites were launched to provide opportunities for asynchronous learning through computer-assisted interactive tools, and to provide ongoing daily Internet communication from their instructor about course developments(2). This was an innovation to the course design to enable understanding and communication, give students the benefit of new technology, and encourage them to develop skills in this area. The websites were modified with student feedback over the following four years. There is a home page for each course, limiting access to students through the use of individual passwords. (Figure 1) In the first two years, there were three sections to facilitate communication (What's New?, Exam Review, Marks) and three sections to facilitate independent learning (Supplemental Readings, Clinical Clips, Interactive Cases.) At the bottom of each page, there is a link where students can send an e-mail message to the instructor with comments, questions or suggestions.