Teaching students to become effective educators through an academic elective course

2013 CAPE outcomes and 2016 ACPE accreditation standards state student graduates should be "able to educate all audiences by determining the most effective and enduring ways to impart information and assess learning".

The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of a professional elective that achieves this outcome and improves students' abilities to teach, communicate, and conduct peer and self-assessment. The Learn to Teach course is a 2-credit hour elective offered to second professional year pharmacy students over an 11-week quarter.

Quantitative and qualitative data was collected from 2010 to 2015 and included students' overall course grades, grades on the formal presentation, and student course evaluations. Peer and self-assessment scores were compared to faculty scores to see if there was any correlation.

116 students have participated in the elective course from 2010 to 2015, 64% of which completed a course evaluation. The mean grade achieved in the course was 93.5%. The mean faculty formal presentation grade for the course was 90.9% and the mean peer assessment grade was 96.2%. The peer and faculty presentation grades showed a 23.8% correlation. Overall, students strongly agreed/agreed that the course objectives were clear (average score of 3.79/4) and course assessments correlated with the course objectives (average score of 3.81/4).

The academic elective has been well received and successfully completed by professional students over the last several years. The skills taught in this academic elective course are applicable to a variety of future pharmacy careers.