Introductory Medicinal Chemistry for Pharmacy Students: An Assignment-Based Online Assessment Strategy

Abstract

New assessment approaches for medicinal chemistry in an introductory course within the pharmacy curriculum are presented. A required introductory pharmaceutical sciences course specific for first year entry-to-practice pharmacy (PharmD) students was developed concurrently within the mandated online learning environment of COVID19. Instead of in-person or online examinations for the medicinal chemistry section, students were required to complete online assignments over the semester. The first series of assignments involved interpretation of a series of specific drug-target PDB structures, using molecular viewing software, to devise new drug analogues, and to rationalize the structural modifications based on proposing specific molecular interactions with the target, with structures being submitted to an online portal as SMILES codes. The final assignment required students to create an online 3 min video describing a specific drug−target interaction, the mechanism of action, structure− activity and additional considerations (adsorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, toxicity) relevant to the specific drug. In subsequent academic years, the same course was delivered in-person to the first year pharmacy students and quantitative feedback collected. Specific questions were posed in addition to those evaluating the instructor, to better understand the student perspective on the assignments. Initial qualitative feedback was highly supportive of the assignment-based assessment strategy. In subsequent years the student feedback was quantified, and the data indicated that the students preferred the assignments over multiple choice or short answer examination assessment.