A two-year long-term workshop centered around a phenotypic whole-cell screening strategy for integrating cutting-edge knowledge and discovery-based laboratory experiences was developed to serve as a preparatory course for enhancing the teaching quality of the upper-level discovery-based research internship curriculum for pharmacy major…

Students in higher education have been shown to have difficulties in developing their critical thinking skills, such as analysis and problem solving, reasoning and argumentation. Open-ended tasks offer opportunities for students to develop their own interpretations of various sources, to critically analyse domain-specific knowledge and utilize…

Modern, quality education for health sciences is vital in developing and strengthening the health systems of countries in southern Africa. Medicine, pharmacy, and other disciplines in the region typically admit high school graduates who tend to undertake a science foundation in the first years of study. We report a new resource for improving the…

This paper describes the development, implementation, and students' perceptions of a new trilayer approach of teaching (TLAT). The TLAT model involved blending lecture, in-class group activities, and out-of-class assignments on selected content areas and was implemented initially in a first-year integrated pharmacy course. Course contents were…

The "flipped" classroom model, including such approaches as team-based learning (TBL), stresses pre-class preparation. For three years in a pharmacokinetics course within a pharmacy curriculum, students had the choice of using reading material or a fully animated module to prepare for class. Qualitative methods were used to analyze…

The discourses around globalisation and internationalisation within higher education to date have tended to focus on institutional change. While recognising the importance of these debates, this paper suggests that issues around curriculum change and teaching and learning through global professions such as health and engineering have so far been…

Globalisation can facilitate improvements in health through the speed and ease of shared information, advances in health care delivery and health policy, and the enhanced pace of discovery through international research collaborations. However, there are associated potential risks to health such as the spread of communicable diseases and…

Studies consistently confirm that there is an extensive need for new theoretical and practical directions for communication in disciplines (CID) programmes. The CID pedagogy calls for more specialized training with more specialized methods in particular professions. This study presents a method developed for practical training studies in pharmacy…

In the present article, the reorientation of a fourth-semester physiology course for pharmacy students is described. The motivation for the introduction of changes was to prepare the students to not only assimilate facts but to learn and understand how to integrate and apply them. The article considers how this reorganization was received by the…

Two-way interactive television established a link between students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin and the San Antonio Health Science Center. A survey indicated that graduates (N=225) were satisfied with television instruction and were positive about instruction from faculty with expertise that were located at other institutions.…

This volume presents 64 abstracts of keynote and parallel paper presentations of the Irish National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning's (NAIRTL) conference on the theme of flexible learning. The Flexible Learning conference was a joint initiative by NAIRTL and the Learning Innovation Network. The keynote presentations can…