A participation requirement to engage students in a pharmacokinetics course synchronously taught at a local and distant campus

Abstract

Objective: To design, implement, and evaluate a strategy to actively engage doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students at local and distant sites in a pharmacokinetics course.

Design: A Web-based system was designed that allowed second-year pharmacy students to choose whether to participate in a instructor-led class discussion session by registering prior to or during the first 10 minutes of each class. The instructor then used the program to randomly select students to respond to questions based on the assigned reading. Five percent of the overall course grade was based on class participation.

Assessment: For each class session, an average of 85% of students at both the local and distant campuses registered for participation in class discussion and approximately 5% were called on to respond to questions. Student responses to course survey questions regarding the participation strategy were overwhelmingly positive, with 75%-90% agreeing that the strategy more actively engaged them in classroom activities, resulting in improved learning. Student performance in all assessment categories was almost identical at the local and distant sites.

Conclusions: Implementation of a participation strategy in a large course synchronously taught on 2 campuses is feasible and results in successful engagement of most students at both sites.

Keywords: active learning; class discussion; class participation; distance learning; synchronous teaching.

Figure 1

Screen snapshots of Web windows used by students for registration (A) and receiving participation number (B).

Figure 2

Screen snapshots of Web windows used by the instructor to broadcast to students during the class session for selecting students (A) and projecting their participation numbers (B).