Caitlin Carter, Liaison Librarian, describes software used to deliver interactive lessons for first-year pharmacy course
“I felt recording videos of myself performing searches on the library website and in the various research databases would be unengaging for students,” Caitlin Carter says.
Carter is the School of Pharmacy’s Liaison Librarian, and she teaches for four weeks of Introduction to Drug Information Fundamentals, a first-year pharmacy course. When spring term moved online due to COVID-19, Caitlin had the challenging job of both digitizing her course content and making it engaging for the online classroom.
“In the course, I walk students through how to search for evidence on medications or treatment options and how to identify credible information” she says. “An integral lesson involves teaching students the differences between various types of literature and study designs and building their skills for interpreting and understanding evidence.”
Carter recognizes that these skills – using research databases like PubMed to conduct systemic searches for evidence – can be dry. So, when she began to transform her lectures for an online learning environment, she decided to get creative.
As a librarian, Carter had access to a e-learning product called Articulate. It’s a tool that incorporates interactive slides, quick quiz questions and audio recordings to package lessons in an attractive module format that can be embedded into a learning management system like the University of Waterloo’s LEARN platform.
“My lectures always involve a lot of hands-on searching activities, so I wanted to experiment with a format that would allow for that,” Carter says. “And the experiment paid off!”
Carter used Articulate to create two interactive modules for students to click through and explore at their own pace. The modules focused on types of literature, an introduction to evidence-based medicine, building answerable research questions using PICO and searching for literature using PubMed and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts. The modules incorporated real-world examples from the community or hospital pharmacy settings She surveyed students afterwards and found the feedback was positive.
“Students liked that I attached brief audio clips to accompany the content and they felt that the interactive aspects of the modules were a nice change of pace from watching videos,” she says. “They liked that there were numerous places where they had to engage with the content and that the lessons were logical and well-organized.”
Carter included knowledge-check questions throughout each module to give students the chance to test their learning as they go. These took various of forms from multiple choice and sorting questions to flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks and matching.
“I think there is a lot of potential with a product like this,” she says. “You could use it to build virtual patients or patient care scenarios and embed videos and attachments of various kinds.”
Carter has used the software again to prepare a module for a Pharmacoeconomics graduate course this fall and plans to keep using it for future online learning experiences.