Student-Creation of eCases for Clinical Reasoning in Pharmacy

Case-based activities are widely proclaimed to enable better learning through allowing students to practice application of concepts in real-life situations. This paper reports an investigation into the learning benefits derived from engaging students in the development of Pharmacy eCases. This is a small scale pilot study. Two student-developers were actively involved in a year-long project where they converted authentic patient cases encountered from a hospital-based clinical clerkship into pedagogically sound eCases. The purpose of this phase of study is to gather experience to inform an expanded phase of eCase development. Several benefits were found. First, the student-developers noted learning benefits for both their knowledge and skills. Second, the peer students perceived learning benefits on knowledge improvement and agreed that the cases developed are relevant for pharmacy practice. Finally, the teacher gained constructive inputs from students on how to enhance the development of eCases in the expanded phase.