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Recently, the University of Waikato introduced a first-year physics course requiring no specific physics or mathematics background, to support degrees in other subjects and allowing maximum diversity in student intake. This course uses the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach in which students develop their own experiments to tackle scientific questions. ISLE has proved successful with mathematically able classes; we have adapted it for a less capable cohort in a regional New Zealand context. We have assessed our approach for 2018 using: pre- and post-course concept tests; performance in exams; a student focus group; analysis of laboratory notebooks and marksheets; interviews with teaching staff; and student comments from the university's course evaluations. Concept tests showed a mean normalised gain of 0.61. Students did well in the exam. Many students were initially unfamiliar with practical scientific investigation and record keeping but laboratory notebooks showed desired learning outcomes were achieved by the end. Students and staff engaged well with this course. Students' final grades were not significantly different between genders and between under-represented minority and non-minority students. We cannot yet say whether this approach provides a sufficient platform for progress in engineering but students have learned fundamental practical physical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pharmacology education currently lacks a research-based consensus on which core concepts all graduates should know and understand, as well as a valid and reliable means to assess core conceptual learning. The Core Concepts in Pharmacology Expert Group (CC-PEG) from Australia and New Zealand recently identified a set of core concepts of pharmacology education as a first step toward developing a concept inventory-a valid and reliable tool to assess learner attainment of concepts. In the current study, CC-PEG used established methodologies to define each concept and then unpack its key components. Expert working groups of three to seven educators were formed to unpack concepts within specific conceptual groupings: what the body does to the drug (pharmacokinetics); what the drug does to the body (pharmacodynamics); and system integration and modification of drug-response. First, a one-sentence definition was developed for each core concept. Next, sub-concepts were established for each core concept. These twenty core concepts, along with their respective definitions and sub-concepts, can provide pharmacology educators with a resource to guide the development of new curricula and the evaluation of existing curricula. The unpacking and articulation of these core concepts will also inform the development of a pharmacology concept inventory. We anticipate that these resources will advance further collaboration across the international pharmacology education community to improve curricula, teaching, assessment, and learning., (© 2021 The Authors. Pharmacology Research & Perspectives published by British Pharmacological Society and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Pharmacology education currently lacks an agreed knowledge curriculum. Evidence from physics and biology education indicates that core concepts are useful and effective structures around which such a curriculum can be designed to facilitate student learning. Building on previous work, we developed a novel, criterion-based method to identify the core concepts of pharmacology education. Five novel criteria were developed, based on a literature search, to separate core concepts in pharmacology from topics and facts. Core concepts were agreed to be big ideas, enduring, difficult, applicable across contexts, and useful to solve problems. An exploratory survey of 33 pharmacology educators from Australia and New Zealand produced 109 terms, which were reduced to a working list of 26 concepts during an online workshop. Next, an expert group of 12 educators refined the working list to 19 concepts, by applying the five criteria and consolidating synonyms, and added three additional concepts that emerged during discussions. A confirmatory survey of a larger group resulted in 17 core concepts of pharmacology education. This list may be useful for educators to evaluate existing curricula, design new curricula, and to inform the development of a concept inventory to test attainment of the core concepts in pharmacology., (© 2021 The Authors. Pharmacology Research & Perspectives published by British Pharmacological Society and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)