Abstract:

Introductory pharmacology course is one of the fundamental and most significant courses in the pre-clinical training of medical students. Prior to our course redesign, the students mainly crammed for the final exam and did no active work during the semester. This resulted in lesser knowledge retention and lower level of the obtained skills. Frontal lectures do not meet the needs of Y and Z-generation student, resulting in poor attendance and lack of engagement. The current student population expects learning to be more personalized, interactive and flexible in terms of time and space. Hence, the course teaching and learning methodology had to be improved.

We have designed a new model based on the “flipped classroom” pedagogical approach incorporating cutting-edge educational technology: the students actively study at home a specific topic, at their own pace followed by a mandatory active-learning lesson in class, in small groups. This allows for in-depth discussions and an opportunity to apply the acquired knowledge.

Students receive interactive reading materials and watch interactive videos as part of their preparations for class. These high quality, short and concise, videos for self-study were prepared and filmed in a studio by all of the course lecturers. Both reading material and videos are enriched with animations, simulations and diverse types of questions with immediate feedback, using Time-to-Know platform and H5P; both embedded in Moodle. These were all designed to increase engagement and ensure the students come prepared to in-class sessions, as well as to assist the lecturers evaluate class and individual progress. The mandatory in-class sessions are varied and creative, clinically-oriented to entice interest, some with a gamification touch (escape room style contest).

We have faced many challenges during the development of the course, including: getting all of the lecturers "on-board", developing an efficient on-line study unit in terms of time spent at home and in class, creating short concise videos out of 3 hour frontal lectures without reducing the academic level, enabling active learning for over 200 students, etc.

These challenges were met successfully, as evident by lecturer and student feedback, in addition to better performance on the final exam.
In conclusion, we encourage lecturers to take a leap of faith and attempt radical changes in traditional courses in order to better accommodate the ever-changing student population.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, hybrid course, active learning, education technologies, gamification, student engagement.