a bit more interactive, helping to develop skills that employers need for the future

so developing things like critical thinking skills, employability skills, communication

skills, working with others because these are the all things that are needed by healthcare

professionals of the future. We want to put a curriculum together that was based on sound

educational theory and something that would be sustainable for future generations of pharmacists

in practise. So we started this team based learning process

in September 2012 and it’s been fabulous, it’s just been phenomenal the success of

it so far. We sense that our students are really enjoying it as well. We’ve got an

awful lot of formal feedback mechanisms with our students and they’re telling us that

it’s working really well but then there’s the sense that I get as I’m teaching in

a session the students are coming prepared, coming ready, they’re taking it seriously,

they’re engaged and when you are wandering around the room facilitating the session you

can just hear the level of the conversation it’s far deeper than anything we’ve experienced

before in sessions. Coming from college I found team based learning

to be quiet new but quiet exciting at the same time it’s completely different to what

I was expecting and comparing it to a normal University when you’re attending lectures

it’s a great way of expressing yourself and monitoring your progress in terms of learning

and a great way of taking part in activities which you wouldn’t usually be able to so

using technology such as clickers we’re able to constantly move forward in terms of

the way learning delivered as opposed to just attending lectures and having to absorb a

lot of information in such a short time. What’s different about pharmacy at Bradford

is that we want to take a learner centred approach to student learning so we’re going

to use a new learning teaching strategy called team based learning. Team based learning works

by helping to develop critical thinking skills, it helps to develop independent learning skills,

and it motivates students to come to class. We want to make sure we’re developing students

that employers want of the future to make sure they have got those capabilities for

employment in pharmacy in the 21st century. Team based learning is a more effective way

of learning we believe than traditional methods because there’s an incentive for students

to come to class, there’s incentive for students to prepare for class because when

they come to class they have it checked that they have done the work in advance. It’s

more about not just learning in class but when their actually in class they’ll learn

how to use that new knowledge so when they’re doing that team test which they do as a team

between 5 and 7 people they get immediate feedback whether they have got the answers

right or wrong. Actually what we are finding is the teams

themselves are providing a lot of that supportive learning so I can come in and help on those

either the topics that need a bit little time and effort or the students that need a little

bit more support At first everyone was in the same position

they we’re like “Hi who are you?” And “where you from?” and we all have different

hobbies so it’s really nice to meet people with different interests. At the moment we’re

helping each other we have one girl who’s really good at chemistry and I’m more into

the psychology side of it so we really help out each other in those circumstances. We

have some people who are really good at explaining how they got to an answer so they can explain

their rationale whereas I am more into “why is this like this?”

There’s always that aspect of competitiveness but it’s friendly competitiveness you always

want to be one step ahead of the next team but at the same time you want to be sure of

yourself you want to be confident that your answer is the right answer.

We always try to make sure that our answer is right in the first place but our explanation

is always strong. Rather than us giving a lecture and us not

understanding or knowing whether that the students have actually t what we have said.

This method gets you to do a test first; we get can immediate feedback from them on whether

they have understood on what we are saying. We assess the students and we can go through

those results in real time. So if we can see there’s 30 per cent of

the room are struggling on a concept I can really focus my teaching on that part so rather

than teaching on the bits we can do well we can spend time looking at the bits that the

majority are struggling on Students will benefit from this new type of

teaching really by being able to work with each other, by developing those team working

skills. With team based learning it’s more fun it’s more enjoyable it’s more active

learning. It’s not just us sitting in a lecture theatre and absorbing information.

It’s discussing it with peers, it’s learning from peers and solving problems that we give

them in a meaningful and authentic way that they’ll need for practise in the future.

When our students graduate and they are practising as pharmacists they will be working in teams

and they will need those problem solving skills, those critical analysis skills, those communication

skills and we’re giving them the opportunity to practise that on a daily basis.

We believe that at team based learning we’ll make our students stand out in the crowd by

developing these skills for employment it will help to meet employer needs it will help

to develop communication skills, their collaboration skills, their teamwork skills. Employers believe

that those are the skills that we need for our pharmacy graduates for the future to be

able to work with each other and overall we believe it will help them to become lifelong

learners.