Teaching innovation and technology-enhanced learning at UCL School of Pharmacy
UCL SCHOOL OF PHARMACY
BRUNSWICK SQUARE
Stephen Hilton, Mine Orlu Gul, Adam Phillips, Oksana Pyzik, Arnaud Ruiz,
Michelle Wake, David West, Andrew Wilderspin and John Malkinson
Green Light Pharmacy Live Education Centre
iPads for Teaching
Assessment of MPharm Research Projects
Green Light Pharmacy is a group of five pharmacies in London run by Alistair Murray, Sanjay
Ganvir and John Foreman. UCL School of Pharmacy has partnered with Green Light
Pharmacy to provide a “pharmacy live” learning experience. The pharmacy is split into two
levels – the working pharmacy and the teaching space on the lower floor. This design allows
students to engage with real patients within a supervised environment mirroring the pharmacy
upstairs.
Small group-based workshops and PBL exercises in which students have access to iPads
have become one of the main features of teaching and learning within the new MPharm
programme. Students are expected to use web resources and information retrieval techniques
to solve the problems within their groups, promoting peer-to-peer learning.
One of the most effective ways to embed research into undergraduate
education is for students to conduct research projects under the
supervision of research-active members of staff. For the duration of
the project, students get to be part of an established research group
and gain experience of such an environment. Students often associate
great value with such experience as they are able to take ownership of
a part of their undergraduate education, encouraging their
development as independent learners, and they also tend to engage
deeply with a narrow field of expertise – opportunities not typically
offered elsewhere in a degree programme. The benefits for the
supervising research group are also evident, often allowing
preliminary, pilot or extension studies to be conducted that may
support funding applications or publications.
Flexible IT
The iPad relives pressure on the IT suites by bringing the internet to any teaching space. The
use of the iPads broadens the scope of what can be achieved in the class by
providing access to many web-based resources as well as native iPad Apps.
Green Light Pharmacy placements are mandatory for all students starting from Year 1 all the
way through to Year 4. A workshop-based format is typically used:
o Workshops are two hours long and students are subdivided into four groups of 5-6 students
each. Each group is engaged in a different activity and groups rotate through the activities in
the pharmacy, followed by a feedback session to the entire group.
o The workshops and activities within Green Light are formative, however the assessment of
the learning outcomes falls within the Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs).
o The workshops enable students to develop communication skills and confidence through
authentic patient interaction, and this is also assessed in the OSCEs.
The Green Light Pharmacy environment demands professionalism from students and exposes
students to a community of practice through peripheral participation.
iPad-based Workshops
Two primary methods of iPad use have arisen within the workshops:
o iPads as informational resources – students use the devices to research web-based
information pertaining to the workshop and/or access electronic lecture notes.
o iPads as interactive devices - native iPad apps are used as a key part of the workshop.
Research projects in the MPharm degree programme at the School
of Pharmacy are conducted in the second term of Year 3. Internal
(SOP-based) projects are conducted from January to May, following
an initial induction period and a series of workshops on key research
project skills and risk assessment, as well as on the award-winning
cross-disciplinary integrated therapeutics wiki project that all
students complete in parallel with their projects. Around 150
students are based within SOP research groups across the four
research divisions. The remaining (ca. 35) students complete either
an ERASMUS or extra-mural project at an approved international
institution. While ERAMUS projects are based in Europe, upcoming
extra-mural project placements will be taking place in Singapore,
Hong Kong, USA and Australia.
Prior to 2013/14, research projects were assessed by means of a 10,000-word dissertation
and an oral presentation. Starting in 2013/14, the mode of research project assessment was
fully revised to incorporate: (a) a project portfolio, in which students record their day-to-day
activity with an emphasis on data management, reflection and ongoing critical review of results
and key literature; (b) a succinct 6,000 word research paper formatted and presented in the
style of a journal specific to the field in which the research project is being conducted; and (c)
presentation of a poster on a key aspect of the work at a mini-conference held at the School,
at which staff and students ask questions to presenters based upon their projects. All aspects
of the project assessments are double-marked blind, generally by two members of the
research division in which the project was conducted.
Community Pharmacy-based Learning
The learning space accommodates 25 students and is ideal for small group work focusing on
activities and services that community pharmacies provide, such as needle exchange
programmes, travel clinics (including vaccination and immunisation), patient group directives
surrounding emergency hormonal contraception etc. There is a live video link connecting the
patient consultation activities such as medicine use reviews (MURs) and the new medicines
service (NMS) upstairs to the learning centre below in order to facilitate peer observation and
feedback.
Important Apps and Websites
o iAnnotate – Allows students to add notes and results to pdf workshop resources on Moodle.
o Horizon – Enables connection to a PC desktop and PC programs.
o Websites – Up-to-date and extended information such as from Medicines Complete
(including eBNF), NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries, MHRA and eMC.
o DropBox and GoogleDrive – Essential tools for getting files to and from the iPads.
Each workshop is led by two UCL teaching staff and a Green Light pharmacist. In this way, all
student activities including dispensing and patient counselling are supervised by a pharmacist.
Year 1 placements focus on orientation in community pharmacy professional practice, planning
safe systems and standard operating procedures (SOPs), medicines supply and management.
As students progress into higher years they explore ethical issues in greater depth, participate
in patient education programmes with volunteer patients and conduct MURs with MURaccredited pharmacists on hand to observe and intervene as well as assess competence.
A strength of this situated learning model is that “walk in” patients provide unscripted and
sometimes unexpected learning outcomes that reflect real clinical and managerial problems,
which practitioners and pharmacists must solve on an everyday basis. Student feedback has
been very positive; in particular students enjoy the patient-facing activities and see them as an
opportunity to apply theory into practice. However, a disadvantage of an authentic learning
environment is that the unpredictable “walk in” patient cases are difficult to replicate. Thus, in
some instances, providing a consistent learning experience for all students may be a
challenge.
Issues Encountered
iPad management is achieved via Apple configurator; this programme can be temperamental.
Not all students want to use touch-pad devices and many are poor at manipulating files across
cloud storage devices and the web. In addition, connection problems with eduroam can disrupt
the workshops.
Feedback from supervisors, other staff and students was very encouraging for the 2013/14
projects. Clear assessment criteria were established for each of the three elements (portfolio,
paper, poster), along with detailed description of requirements to be met for each grade range.
Such detailed assessment criteria are very helpful in project assessment and feedback and
can help to reduce inter-marker variability, particularly for the portfolios, which may differ
enormously between, for example, a lab-based chemistry project and a hospital-based clinical
pharmacy project. It was also generally felt that the research paper was preferable to a lengthy
dissertation as students gained experience of preparing a manuscript in a journal format
suitable for publication and had to present their research in a much more focused and succinct
manner. The poster conference was particularly well-received by staff and students alike.
Students engaged enthusiastically with the session and were very keen to talk about their
work with their peers, who seemed genuinely interested in their often very different projects.
The excitement and energy of the session was clearly evident, and the diversity of the projects
conducted at the School across the research divisions also added to the success of this
approach.