We are now just under one year away from our targeted rollout date (autumn 2016) for our new Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum. Exciting progress continues to be made as we build on the program-level plan that was affirmed by college faculty in March 2016.
Our faculty, with guidance from our Curricular Change Implementation Team, are actively developing content modules to support the program-level plan. These modules, which are different from the existing individual courses that many of us are more familiar with, will focus on integrating key content for entry-level pharmacists, balancing didactic training in foundational sciences and patient care with opportunities for students to develop skills, abilities and behaviors that prepare them to identify, prioritize and solve real-world patient and medication use system problems. Modules will be offered in the new curriculum in such a way that students will be able to immerse themselves in one to three content areas at a time. Key concepts will be introduced and reinforced throughout the curriculum, encouraging deeper connection of important ideas across all levels of the program.
To help faculty develop the new curriculum, we recently welcomed a new Education Program Director, Mr. Justin Habash, to the college. Justin joined our team in June from Ohio Dominican University, where he worked with faculty development, focusing on teaching and learning strategies. Justin has been instrumental in the curricular revision process here by facilitating conversations among module teams and serving as a resource for our faculty as they explore teaching and learning strategies for the new curriculum.
For this week’s post, I asked Justin to share a few words about his experience with one of our major curricular change initiatives this summer, our Curriculum Design Institute (CDI). The Institute took place in five installments between June-August, facilitating development of module learning goals, assignments, assessments, and content for the first professional year of the curriculum.
Earlier this month, we wrapped up a Curriculum Design Institute series facilitated by our friends Stephanie Rohdieck and Teresa Johnson from the University Center for Advancement of Teaching (UCAT). Interested faculty members, preceptors, and fourth-year PharmD students were assigned to module teams to collaborate in designing the first year of the new PharmD curriculum over the course of five sessions this summer.
Using the backward design process for course development, we began by establishing our learning goals: what we wanted our students to be able to accomplish at the end of each module. This proved a challenging step for some of the module teams who had the Herculean task of figuring out how best to integrate concepts and objectives from multiple courses into a single module. The benefit of the new modular approach is that it moves us toward greater integration of vital concepts, facilitating student learning by helping them to connect key ideas across topic areas. After deciding on these learning goals, the module teams developed assignments which would be used to assess student achievement of each of these goals.
Central to the backward design process is the development of assessments that serve as good measurements of the objectives themselves. Mapping the newly developed assignments to the objectives, CDI participants then constructed the basic skeletons of the modules, including some preliminary decisions on time. We closed the final session of the CDI by continuing the cross-talk between module teams relative to topics and time required, providing important feedback to one another as teams continued to refine their module plans.
In addition to establishing the basic framework of each module in the P1 year, CDI participants tackled difficult questions regarding the incorporation of mastery based learning and total student time for each module. These initial conversations have provided a springboard for more advanced discussions and decisions on such topics by the module leaders and the PharmD Program Committee.
The end result of the hard work of these dedicated faculty members, staff, students, and preceptors is a solid foundation for an exciting new PharmD curriculum. Throughout the process, the determination and ingenuity of the CDI participants was truly impressive as they worked through various challenges to design a student-centered curriculum. The new curriculum capitalizes on the strengths of our program while also moving us toward greater student engagement in both didactic and clinical settings.
While there is still much to do as we continue to develop the new curriculum, the effort of the CDI participants over the summer has been vital in setting us up for success. I’d like to extend my deepest thanks to all those who participated for their time and effort. As someone who has been involved in numerous interdisciplinary efforts at several universities, I feel pretty confident in saying that the level of professionalism and teamwork I’ve experienced with this group is exceedingly rare in academic circles. I’m very grateful for the efforts of each member of the team. Finally, a special thanks to Mary Higginbotham for all her coordination efforts over the course of the CDI.
I would also like to extend my thanks to all of the CDI participants (more than forty in all), who devoted time to this process this summer, and who continue to be engaged as we move forward with developing the curriculum. Were it not for this group, and for everyone who has contributed to this process, we would not be able to develop such a robust and promising structure for educating future pharmacists.
We look forward to continuing to work with this group in future, and to submitting our proposal to the university for the revision of the PharmD curriculum later this fall. We will keep you posted in the Knowledge Dispensary as future developments progress.
Best regards,