The Role of Using Formative Assessments in Problem-based Learning: A Health Sciences Education Perspective

Practitioners in the field of pharmacy are often confronted with ill-structured problems. Specifically, pharmacists are tasked with making patient-specific recommendations that are both safe and effective, which requires combining knowledge from the biomedical, behavioral, and pharmaceutical sciences. Given the dynamic nature of pharmacy as a profession, the field has begun to explore learning strategies that go beyond mere content coverage to strategies that better support higher-order learning outcomes. One of these approaches is problem-based learning (PBL). While studies have focused on how to support PBL to improve learning outcomes, the role of assessment is often overlooked. Further exploration is thus needed since assessment plays a pivotal role in teaching and learning. This Voices paper will explore this idea within a larger context; we will also share the experience of how a subject matter expert (SME) worked with a team of instructional designers (IDs) to revise an existing course to more explicitly employ PBL and thus adopt an inquiry-based mindset needed for complex clinical decision making. Given the inherent challenges of assessment in PBL, further discussion will be focused on how to (a) design ill-structured problems, (b) align assessments to the PBL curriculum, and (c) how to hold students accountable in cases where a traditional grade is not attached

Gaining a Global Criminal Justice Perspective : A Computer-Supported Collaboration Between Students in Sweden and the United States

This paper explores how Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) can globalize a criminal justice curriculum. It draws on a project where criminology students in Sweden and the United States collaborated in an online environment. We describe the design of the project and use student reflections to identify successes and challenges. The results show that for a CSCL to be successful, instructors need to be intentional about academic, psychological, and interpersonal aspects of the collaboration, as they are all interrelated. The students experienced challenges, for example, related to the workload. However, in most cases, the perceived benefits outweighed the challenges. The students reported an improved understanding of criminology theory and enhanced critical thinking skills. We argue that CSCL canimprove the affordability and accessibility of global learning. Without having to travel, the students entered a virtual space where they could learn together with students and faculty from another country

The role of using formative assessments in problem-based learning: A health sciences education perspective

Practitioners in the field of pharmacy are often confronted with ill-structured problems. Specifically, pharmacists are tasked with making patient-specific recommendations that are both safe and effective, which requires combining knowledge from the biomedical, behavioral, and pharmaceutical sciences. Given the dynamic nature of pharmacy as a profession, the field has begun to explore learning strategies that go beyond mere content coverage to strategies that better support higher-order learning outcomes. One of these approaches is problem-based learning (PBL). While studies have focused on how to support PBL to improve learning outcomes, the role of assessment is often overlooked. Further exploration is thus needed since assessment plays a pivotal role in teaching and learning. This Voices paper will explore this idea within a larger context; we will also share the experience of how a subject matter expert (SME) worked with a team of instructional designers (IDs) to revise an existing course to more explicitly employ PBL and thus adopt an inquiry-based mindset needed for complex clinical decision making. Given the inherent challenges of assessment in PBL, further discussion will be focused on how to (a) design ill-structured problems, (b) align assessments to the PBL curriculum, and (c) how to hold students accountable in cases where a traditional grade is not attached