Faculty Receive Innovations In Teaching Award
December 1, 2015
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL — College of Pharmacy faculty Keri Hager, Kristin Janke and Shannon Reidt, along with Jim Beattie from the U’s Health Sciences Libraries, received the highly-competitive Innovations in Teaching Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy for their project, “When Drug Literature Evaluation Isn’t Enough: Implementing a Longitudinal Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Sequence with a First-Year Milestone EBM Assessment.”
“This award demonstrates that our new integrated curriculum is effective and uses an evidence-based approach to teaching students,” said Reidt. “This is a big win for the college and demonstrates that an integrated curriculum is successful.”
About the Project
A Longitudinal Sequence with a First-Year Milestone Assessment was implemented to teach evidence-based medicine (EBM) skills. This application describes an approach to instruction that moves away from the conventional strategy of teaching drug information and drug literature evaluation as stand-alone courses and, instead, embraces the EBM Framework and its use in the context of authentic problem solving.
The EBM Framework—Ask, Acquire, Appraise, and Apply—was used as the basis for defining seven EBM skills that were targeted in the evidence-based, integrated design of learning activities and assessments.
This initiative involved a Longitudinal EBM Sequence with 17 learning episodes delivered with eight faculty members through six courses in the first year.
The First-Year Milestone Assessment, called the Modified Fresno Test, was adapted from an evidence-based assessment tool used in medicine and physical therapy.
When compared to third-year students who did not experience the Longitudinal Sequence, first-year students demonstrated a higher level of EBM skill, thus providing evidence that this initiative was effective.
About the Award
The purpose of the Innovations in Teaching Competition is to identify innovative teaching/learning strategies and assessment methods, provide an opportunity to engage faculty in a process of documenting their scholarly approach to teaching and learning, and provide an opportunity for selected faculty to present and disseminate their work at a special session during the 2015 AACP Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.