PHAR351 Instructor Resources (2012W1)

Instructor Resources & Guidelines

Course Coordinator: Dr. Judith Soon | 604-807-1638

Graduate Teaching Assistant: TBA

The Course

P351 is the first in a series of four required therapeutics courses delivered in the 2nd and 3rd years of the UBC undergraduate pharmacy curriculum. It is a 2-credit course focusing on dermatological, respiratory and gastrointestinal therapeutics. P351 is offered in a coordinated fashion with P371 (Pathophysiology), P341 (Pharmacology), and P361 (Non-prescription Medicines & Self-care of the Patient). You can expect that the students will have already had the relevant pathophysiology and pharmacology sessions prior to your therapeutics session. Upon your request, we are happy to connect you with the individuals teaching the other sessions so you can clarify the depth/scope of the required therapeutics material.

Integrated P3X1 Course schedule

The Students

Your target audience is 2nd year pharmacy (3rd year university) undergraduate students. N= approximately 225. They’re keen, courteous and a capable group of mixed young and mature students, many with previous degrees. They are active learners, are prepared for the lectures and ask questions. Expect to be challenged.

The students have been provided with the following Wiki to use as a way to find useful evidence and technology resources. Check it out.

Pharmacy Evidence and Technology Resources

Teaching Format & Tips

The format is 1 instructor on ~225 students in a lecture theatre. There are no additional tutorials or workshops. Sessions should be case-based. This can be achieved by using a simple case (or several) to illustrate the therapeutic principles that should be applied when managing a particular condition.

Provide students with learning objectives for your session.

Instructors are expected to use teaching techniques which maximize student engagement, and therefore, learning within the large-class context. Suggested strategies to avoid pure transmission (“lecturing”) format for sessions include:

• Use the classroom for hard stuff (e.g., difficult concepts, common/actual misconceptions, patient problem-solving). Move list-like and fact-oriented material outside the classroom (assign as pre-reading).
• Strongly root the session in realistic patient examples and problems which the students must solve.
• Use Team-Based Learning techniques to the extent possible (http://www.teambasedlearning.org/starting)
• Use frequent think/pair/share interludes (http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/tpshare.html)
• Start your session with a quiz to assess preparation, misconceptions, etc.
• Use polling software (www.polleverywhere.com) for interactive audience response.
• Create a Wiki page for your session (http://wiki.ubc.ca) and populate it with: objectives, links to trials, definitions, pre-readings, additional reading, other sites of interest, movies, etc, etc. (example: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:PHAR501/NaH2O). This is a great way to minimize sending PDFs all over. To share all your session materials, we just post the URL. Here's a TEMPLATE PAGE to start you off.
• LOTS of video tips on large-classroom teaching here: http://www.teaching.utoronto.ca/topics/teachingcontexts/explore/strategies.htm

Any time you have questions or need support to do something different or better, do not hesitate to contact the course coordinator and/or GTA.

Session Materials

As of Sept 2012, we will not be printing handouts for any 2nd year courses. Students are free to view materials you make available to them (e.g., PDF of slides, or similar) on their own computers/tablets, or print them personally.

Your session materials must be posted 3 business days before your session(s) to allow students adequate time to prepare.

The course Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) will contact you 7 days before your session to provide instructions for submitting your materials for posting.

Copyright issues

In 2011, instructors were warned about circulating PDFs from journals due to copyright restrictions affecting UBC and other Canadian universitites. As of 24AUG12, this issue has essentially been resolved by the Supreme Court of Canada. "The SCC has decided that the fair dealing exception allows teachers to make copies of copyrighted works and distribute them to students as part of classroom instruction". You can review the "fair dealing" criteria, but posting PDFs of journal articles for teaching purposes falls well within it.

Prereading Assignments

All students are required to read the associated chapter in Therapeutic Choices however if you would like them to read some other material ahead of time please let us know.

Course Text

Therapeutic Choices - 6th edition

Assessment

There is just a final exam for the course.

The Coordinator and/or GTA will contact you a couple of weeks before exams to elicit appropriate assessment questions from you.

Lecture Capture

All sessions taught in Pharmacy courses are automatically captured and posted for later review by students. The repository for 300-level sessions is TBA

Room Amenities

All sessions take place in UBC PHRM 1101 in the new Pharmaceutical Sciences building.

First, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C55pm-LtIcs&feature=youtu.be In most cases, a Graduate TA will be in the classroom to assist you with basic AV support. If not, you can call the AV Specialist Vincent Leung at 604-827-1817, or the AV helpline at 604-822-9140.

The list of technological amenities in this room is long. Wireless networking, VGA and HDMI connections, document camera are available, as is a lot of other technology. The course GTA will attend most sessions and can provide basic technical support. A help-line to an in-building technical support person is available too. If you have special plans (e.g., using audience response systems, video conferencing, other), contact us well in advance so technical support can be arranged.

Parking

Park in the Thunderbird Parkade. The course GTA will provide off-campus instructors with a parking pass at the beginning or end of your session. The parking pass works ONLY FOR THUNDERBIRD PARKADE. If you pay to park somewhere else, we are unable to reimburse you.

Thank you for your participation in P351!