An Environmental Scan on the Status of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills in Colleges/Schools of Pharmacy: Report of the 2009–2010 Academic Affairs Standing Committee

Objective. To determine if the process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) teaching strategy improves student performance and engages higher-level thinking skills of first-year pharmacy students in an Introduction to Pharmaceutical Sciences course. Design. Overall examination scores and scores on questions categorized as requiring either higherlevel or lower-level thinking skills were compared in the same course taught over 3 years using traditional lecture methods vs the POGIL strategy. Student perceptions of the latter teaching strategy were also evaluated. Assessment. Overall mean examination scores increased significantly when POGIL was implemented. Performance on questions requiring higher-level thinking skills was significantly higher, whereas performance on questions requiring lower-level thinking skills was unchanged when the POGIL strategy was used. Student feedback on use of this teaching strategy was positive. Conclusion. The use of the POGIL strategy increased student overall performance on examinations, improved higher-level thinking skills, and provided an interactive class setting.Keywords: POGIL, active learning, process skills, instructional assessment INTRODUCTIONDeveloping students' critical-thinking and problemsolving skills is an educational goal common to perhaps every academic program or discipline. Critical to achieving this goal is the use of teaching and learning strategies that engage students and promote development of the process skills of application, analysis, and evaluation. Yet, despite a growing body of evidence demonstrating the efficacy and superiority of active-learning strategies and national reports calling for the adoption of these methods, 1-4 instructional strategies in science and math disciplines tend to be passive, leading to student disengagement and contributing to the "leaky pipeline" of science. [5][6][7][8][9] The reasons science faculty members give for being reluctant to adopt active-learning strategies include the significant amount of time needed to prepare materials, the reluctance to reduce the amount of material covered, and the perception that students are unwilling to engage in or prepare for these types of classroom activities. [10][11][12] In the pharmacy academy, active-learning strategies are recognized as important to achieving educational outcomes and, therefore, widely adopted in professional programs. [13][14][15] However, the use of active-learning strategies is not uniformly distributed. Faculty members in the biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences are 3 times less likely than faculty members in the clinical and social and administrative sciences to use these techniques. 15 Process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) is a teaching strategy that was initially developed in college chemistry and biology courses and is used successfully to engage students in the classroom and to promote learning. [16][17][18][19][20] The POGIL strategy begins with introducing students to a model, diagram, problem, or set of data and then requires them to ...

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning Strategy Enhances Students’ Higher Level Thinking Skills in a Pharmaceutical Sciences Course

Soltis

Verlinden

Kruger

et al. 2015

“…2 Bloom's taxonomy encompasses all facets of learning, which include the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. 3 Of these, the cognitive domain seems to receive the most attention and educators strive to provide didactic experiences that touch on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Clinical Reasoning and Problem-solving Skills Using Human Patient Simulation

Vyas

Ottis

Caligiuri

2011

“…52 Oderda and colleagues suggest 4 key considerations for pharmacy educators when designing coursework. 42 First, lectures may not provide an optimal learning environment for students with different expectations of course content delivery. Moreover, today's students view the teacher more as a facilitator of learning and less as a provider of information.…”

Section: Teaching Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…42 In addition, clinical reasoning, inference, and decision-making are important components of pharmacy practice. 43 The best strategies to assess clinical reasoning and critical thinking are debatable.…”

Section: Teaching Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canadian Educational Approaches for the Advancement of Pharmacy Practice

Frankel

Louizos

Austin

2014

Canadian faculties (schools) of pharmacy are actively engaged in the advancement and restructuring of their programs in response to the shift in pharmacy to pharmacists having/assuming an advanced practitioner role. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of evidence outlining optimal strategies for accomplishing this task. This review explores several educational changes proposed in the literature to aid in the advancement of pharmacy education such as program admission requirements, critical-thinking assessment and teaching methods, improvement of course content delivery, value of interprofessional education, advancement of practical experiential education, and mentorship strategies. Collectively, implementation of these improvements to pharmacy education will be crucial in determining the direction the profession will take.