The novel coronavirus identified in 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted pharmacy graduate and postgraduate education. This crisis has resulted in a cosmic shift in the administration of these programs to ensure core values are sustained. Adjustments may be needed at a minimum to ensure that postgraduate trainees complete program requirements while maintaining safety. Moving forward, additional issues may arise that will need to be addressed such as admissions and program onboarding, acclimating students to new training environments, and managing inadequate resources for distance education, distance practice, and remote versus in-person research opportunities.
Abstract:The flipped classroom is an approach to incorporate active learning that is being used in secondary education, higher education, and professional schools. This study investigates its impact on student learning and confidence in a professional degree program course. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate pharmacy students enrolled in a semester-long didactic traditional classroom course compared to students learning the same material using a flipped model through online self-study modules in a hands-on experiential learning course. Before and after each learning experience, students of each group completed a 16-item knowledge assessment on four topic areas and rated their level of confidence with each topic area on a Likert scale. There was a significant difference in knowledge with students in the traditional course scoring higher than students using flipped approach in the experiential course. Furthermore, the flipped experiential course students did not improve assessment scores from pre-test to post-test. For confidence rating, the traditional course group ranked confidence higher than the flipped experiential group for all topics. These findings challenge the notion that the flipped model using self-study in an experiential setting can be a substitution for didactic delivery of pharmacy education.
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