Flipping the Class Promotes Second Medical Student Pharmacology Learning in an Integrated Curriculum
Authors: Gorman A. Laurel 
Published: April 2020

Background

Reforms in medical and healthcare education have dictated that faculty use more active learning and flipped classroom pedagogies to enhance critical thinking and student‐centered learning of the preclinical foundational sciences. During this transition from didactic approaches, students and faculty have expressed concerns about efficacy and ideal implementation processes for active learning of complex subjects like pharmacology. Indeed, some literature supports that flipped techniques can be highly effective for learning, but some institutions have reported that flipped processes are poorly perceived by healthcare students, with pitfalls contributing to “flopping” of the experience that include design flaws, inappropriate learner preparation, excessive learner workload demands, and poor learner engagement. At the UCF College of Medicine, flipped classrooms are used to teach a proportion of pharmacology topics.

Purpose

The goal of this poster is to describe successful implementation processes for pharmacology flipped classrooms as well as to share preliminary evidence of effective learning outcomes and positive student perceptions of the educational value.

Methods

To determine learning, performance was compared, retrospectively, on similar or identical pharmacology formative questions on topics taught by didactic or narrated PowerPoint (DNPP) in a previous year vs flipped classroom (FC). Student perceptions of effectiveness of teaching methods were compared from prior course evaluations using either DNPP or FC methods.

Results

A small increase in performance was detected for FC, but was not significant (Student’s t‐test, p=0.54) when comparing scores (reported as mean ± SD) for items taught by DNPP (84.6±11) vs FC (86.6±7.7). The most common pharmacology FC methods employed team‐based audience response sessions or case‐based learning. Greater than 90% of students agreed teaching methods were effective for both the DNPP and the FC sessions. A small minority made negative comments about flipped classes in anonymous course evaluations, but these were contradicted by other positive comments asking for more of these active learning sessions.

Conclusions

These findings support that the flipped class method can be implemented in a manner conducive to effective pharmacology learning. While individual opinions varied, the majority of students were receptive to flipped classes and most who participated in sessions appeared engaged and prepared. The results support that the flipped method was effective but don’t demonstrate that the flipped classrooms were superior to didactic or narrated power points for short‐term pharmacology learning as measured by weekly formative quizzes. While other studies have shown active learning methods are associated with better retention and problem‐solving skills, this preliminary analysis didn’t explore long‐term learning or transfer of critical thinking skills so no conclusions can be made about these important benefits without additional study.

Support or Funding Information

Unfunded retrospective analysis of performance data