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Online debates to enhance critical thinking in pharmacotherapy
Theresa L Charrois1, Michelle Appleton
1School of Pharmacy, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
Objectives:
To assess the impact of teaching strategies on the complexity and structure of students' arguments and type of informal reasoning used in arguments.
Design:
Students were given an introduction to argumentation followed by 2 formal debates, with feedback provided in between.
Assessment:
Four debate groups were randomly selected for evaluation. In debate 1, all groups posted 1 argument, and all 4 arguments were rationalistic and ranked as high-level arguments. In debate 2, members of the 4 groups posted a total of 33 arguments, which were evaluated and received an overall median ranking lower than that for debate 1. All debates were categorized as rationalistic.
Conclusion:
Students were able to formulate rationalistic arguments to therapeutic controversies; however, their level of argumentation decreased over the course of the study. Changes planned for the future include conducting the debates in the context of patient scenarios to increase practical applicability.
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