From the podium to the PC: a study on various modalities of lecture delivery within an undergraduate basic pharmacology course

摘要

The need to evolve with our ever-changing student bodies has never been as great as it is today, particularly given the advanced technological aptitude of today's students. This retrospective study evaluates student outcomes as they relate to overall course score and composite quiz and examination scores from a basic pharmacology course taught over three separate semesters using three different lecture delivery modalities: traditional in-class; blended; and online-only. A total of 48 students from a US university's health sciences bachelor degree programme enrolled in one of these three sections between 2009 and 2010. A one-way analysis of variance test with Tukey's hon estly significant difference post hoc testing was utilized to determine if any sta tistical difference existed between the studied outcomes for each of the three teaching modalities. A p-value of less than or equal to 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. The students enrolled in the online-only course scored statistically sig nificantly higher than their counterparts enrolled on the traditional course for all studied outcomes, and higher than those enrolled on the blended course for most of the studied outcomes. The results of this study demonstrate that students enrolled in the online-only section achieved scores that were statistically significantly higher than their counterparts enrolled in the traditional and blended lecture settings. These findings reveal that students enrolled in an online course may in fact have improved performance compared with traditional lecture methods, given their generational preferences for learning.