An Infographic Assignment to Translate Self-Care Therapeutics into Practical Application

Student Pharmacist Engagement in Infographic Creation to Increase Awareness of Impostor Phenomenon

OBJECTIVE

To assess first professional year (P1) students learning about impostor phenomenon (IP) through participation in learning activities featuring the creation of an educational IP infographic.

METHODS

A total of 167 P1 students were invited to complete a validated survey to determine baseline IP tendencies and attended a near-peer-delivered course lecture on IP. Student groups of 4 created an infographic containing IP lecture information and survey results, aimed at increasing IP awareness in a target audience. Mixed methods were integrated to assess learning outcomes. Qualitatively, infographics were evaluated by rubric for completeness, accuracy, and visual literacy, and student reflections were thematically evaluated on the impact of IP activities; quantitatively, 19 student learning objectives were anonymously self-assessed by Likert Scale survey. Students viewed all 42 created infographics, applied criteria, and voted for the 3 best.

RESULTS

Survey results indicated 58% of P1 students exhibited IP tendencies above the scale's defined threshold for significant impostorism. Student groups demonstrated IP learning through developing creative, accurate, and concise infographics, with a mean score of 85% (4.27/5). Assessment survey respondents agreed they can confidently describe IP (92%) and design an infographic for a target audience using acquired knowledge (99%). Through critical reflections on the impact of IP exercises, students expressed improvement in self-awareness and communication skills; described the benefits of engagement in random peer groups; and voiced appreciation for a novel method of learning material (infographic creation).

CONCLUSION

Students demonstrated learning about IP by incorporating lecture and survey results into engaging infographics and expressed benefits from learning about this important topic that is prevalent in P1 students.

Use of infographics for facilitating learning of pharmacology in the nursing degree

AIM

To evaluate the impact of an educational intervention focused on teaching students to create infographics to improve pharmacology learning.

DESIGN

This is a comparative study.

METHODS

The population was 250 nursing students who had to create two infographics in groups related to the content that had been addressed in pharmacology in two different moments. Students and professors evaluated the infographics through a 5-point Likert scale. Scores from the official exam of the pharmacology subject were obtained.

RESULTS

Most of the students scored below 50% for the "excellent" and "good" categories. Intraclass correlation and kappa correlations among students and professors' evaluations were low. The comparison between both times of students' evaluations only yields significant correlation values for the criterion "Understanding of information" (r = .039, p = .024) and the "Visual presentation of information" (r = .041, p = .019). No correlation was obtained between the test and evaluations values of the infographic.

Instructor-Blinded Study of Pharmacy Student Learning When a Flipped Online Classroom Was Implemented during the COVID-19 Pandemic

A multi-cohort instructor-blinded research study was completed at the School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to test the impact on study learning endpoints when an online flipped classroom teaching style was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The learning endpoints were gain in factual knowledge and gain in self-confidence in clinical skills (assessing a patient, developing a care plan for a minor ailment, and implementing the care plan by counselling patients on the condition). Gain in factual knowledge was assessed with an instructor-blinded multiple-choice test administered before and after the course. Gain in self-confidence in clinical skills was assessed with a survey asking students to report their self-confidence in completing 10 clinical tasks on a 5-item Likert scale. Students being taught in an online flipped classroom cohort during the COVID-19 pandemic trended toward having a higher gain in self-confidence throughout the course but a lower gain in factual knowledge when compared with a traditional classroom cohort in the previous year.