Objective. To review and recommend strategies for utilizing student ratings of instruction (course and instructor) including considerations regarding design, administration, and use and interpretation of results. Findings. Improving course delivery and pedagogy using student ratings of instruction requires programs to design evaluation instruments that are aligned with the following good, scholarly teaching criteria: offer 10-20 rating scale questions and at least one written response question, ensure that students understand what the questions are asking, use a standardized form for evaluating all faculty members, allow for additional tailored questions to be added to the form, and employ a four- or five-point rating scale with a "not applicable" option. When administering evaluations, programs should limit the number of faculty members evaluated to those teaching greater than or equal to five clock hours of lecture or schedule evaluations based on academic rank; use an online course evaluation tool; randomly select students to participate; offer the evaluation at the end of the term (and/or midpoint for team taught classes); offer the evaluation during scheduled class time; and allow for voluntary, anonymous student participation. Finally, programs should create an assessment plan that outlines the results' release timeline, a list of who will receive result summaries, and how the results will be used. Programs should also encourage faculty reflection, offer mentoring in results interpretation, coach faculty members to summarize and quantify comments and longitudinally track results using tables, and create an accountability action plan to address deficiencies. Summary. In order to better ensure that student ratings of instruction are used to improve teaching, colleges and schools should adopt intentional design, structured administration processes, and transparent reporting of results.

Objectives. To identify the variables associated with an academic pharmacy career choice among the following groups: final professional-year doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students, pharmacy residents...

Objective. To introduce PharmD students to changes in calculations question types (constructed-response versus selected-response questions); measure and compare student performance on constructed-response and selected-response questions in a pharmaceutics course; and collect student feedback on the use of differing question types. Methods A pharmaceutics/pharmaceutical calculations examination was administered that included 15 pairs of questions; each pair consisted of a constructed-response question and a similar selected-response question. An online questionnaire was conducted to collect student feedback. Results. Of the 15 topics, the class scored higher on the constructed-response question for 4 topics and higher on the selected-response question for 10 topics. Eighty percent of the class preferred selected-response questions, although 47.8% felt constructed-response questions better prepared them for a career in healthcare. Conclusions. Students correctly answered more selected-response questions than constructed-response questions and felt more confident in doing so. Additional constructed-response teaching and testing methods should be incorporated into pharmacy education.

To assess pharmacy faculty members' perceptions of conditions associated with workload equity and factors that can improve workload equity. A 26-item survey instrument was developed and distributed via email to members of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Council of Faculties. Questions pertained to workload distribution, fairness in assignment, and perception of the conditions associated with workload equity from O'Meara and colleagues (transparency, context, credit, clarity, norms, and accountability) as well as institutional and individual demographics. A total of 662 responses were obtained (response rate 15.9%). Respondents' demographics were comparable to available national data. Approximately 41% of respondents reported their institutions did not have a written faculty workload policy. Most respondents reported their workload assignment was fair (highest with research/scholarship) but reported only moderate alignment between assigned and actual workloads. The rating level for what domains the primary decision maker uses to assign workload was highest for context, followed by credit, clarity, and transparency. Transparency was reported as the most needed condition to improve faculty perception of workload equity. Respondents also rated increasing trust between leadership and faculty and increasing productivity and accountability as the most important reasons to minimize workload inequities. This was the first national survey of pharmacy faculty perceptions around the conditions associated with workload equity. Though additional research is needed in this area, programs can work to implement strategies associated with all of the conditions, particularly transparency, to improve faculty perceptions of equity.

Tracking adherence can be a useful means of identifying opportunities to provide educational intervention to nonadherent patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of biosensing technology to track medication adherence. Searches of PubMed and Ovid IPA were conducted. The criteria for inclusion were studies that tracked and reported ingestion events. Studies that did not track ingestion events were excluded from this review. Titles and abstracts were assessed for relevance, and full-text reviews were performed on all potentially relevant studies. References from the studies retrieved from the literature searches were assessed for additional applicable articles. Overall, ingestion events were detected 91.3% of the time, with many of the failed detections being related to patients not using or inappropriately using the system. In the studies that looked at the latency time, the overall mean time to detection by the wearable sensor was between 1.1 and 5.1 min. With medication nonadherence being a persistent problem in healthcare, biosensing technology presents an innovative approach to tracking adherence. The technology has been shown to be accurate in its ability to track actual medication use in patients. It has also been shown to detect ingestions with a minimal delay after administration. Accessibility may be an issue with this technology in the future, and further studies may be necessary to access the viability of biosensing technology.

The objective of this review is to provide the conclusions from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Council of Deans (COD) Taskforce on Research and Scholarship. The charges and the finding of the committee are: 1: Define the scholarship needs/opportunities to strengthen the outputs. The committee recommends that AACP update its definitions of research/scholarship to include discovery, integration, application/practice, and teaching/learning. A deployed survey demonstrated a high SIG research/scholarship interest. 2: Assemble a toolkit of grant and scholarship resources to assist colleges/schools. AACP should update the existing funding opportunity listing and combine with additional resources. 3: Create a framework for effective research collaboration and mentorship. AACP should identify key areas of pharmacy research and experts to serve as mentors and to meet with external stakeholders. 4 and 5: Consider the need for and purpose of a COD standing committee for research and scholarship. Explore the value of a formal research deans subcommittee. It was recommended that AACP form a research/scholarship committee or SIG and create the Pharmacy Scholarship, Research, and Graduate Education (Pharmacy SuRGE) pre-meeting to the Interim Meeting. 6: Identify key statements/outputs of the COD that need to be prepared for publication/sharing. We recommended the key statement/outputs in the areas of discovery, integration, application/practice, and teaching and learning. The taskforce reviewed the state of research and scholarship across the academy and provided recommendations with the goal to advance research across all areas of the pharmacy profession.