The focal course for this study, Pharmaceutics I, is a foundational course for the first year students (P1) enrolled in the in the PharmD program. It focuses on helping students create integrative bridges between the prepharm chemistry courses and the clinical courses in the PharmD curriculum. The main expected outcome of this course is that students build strong analytical and problem-solving skills. The instructional process in Pharmaceutics I is driven by lectures augmented with story problems integrated in the lecture as worked examples. This instructional strategy proved to be effective except for two major topics in the course: "acids and bases," especially "buffered and isotonic solutions" problems, and respectively "chemical kinetics" problems. The first topic has a significant representation in one of the major exams during the semester and the second topic has a significant representation in the final exam. Therefore, the impact of these two topics on students' performance could be significant. The instructor decided to work with the college's instructional designer to identify potential solutions to address this issue. The instructor-instructional designer team decided to implement "productive failure," a failure-based instructional strategy proved effective in increasing students' problem-solving skill in mathematics. This study aimed at answering the following questions: (1) Will the use of productive failure as an active learning instructional strategy increase students' exam performance?; and (2) Do students perceive productive failure as more valuable for their learning than the more traditional lecture part in the course? As this study emerged as an instructor-driven instructional design process, the research team followed an action research approach using a design-based research (DBR) design. The 2014 student cohort served as the control group for the quasi-experimental research design implemented in this first iteration, and the 2015 and 2016 student cohorts served as treatment groups for the productive failure intervention. Each cohort had between 81 and 85 students. The implementation of the productive failure strategy in the Pharmacology course confirmed its effectiveness when correctly transferred to this domain in pharmacy education.