Flipping the Classroom for Pharmacokinetics

A flipped classroom approach was implemented in a pharmacokinetics course to encourage active student learning and enable the development of higher level learning skills. Students viewed written and/or audio-visual recordings of content materials prior to active face-to-face engagement where they then applied their learning through the evaluation and analysis of different clinical scenarios, calculation of dosing regimens, and synthesis of information to create resources. Student outcomes for the flipped pharmacokinetics course in 2013 were compared with student outcomes for the traditionally taught pharmacokinetics course in 2012 which acted as control. Student evaluations of the course showed significantly stronger satisfaction with their learning experience by students in the innovative 2013 course compared to students in the traditional 2012 control (P=0.01).Although students in the 2013 cohort strongly agreed that flipping the classroom enabled them to apply their learning and that it had a positive effect on their learning, there was no significant difference in the major assessment results between the 2013 and 2012 cohorts.