Simon,

Our pharmacy program at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, uses TBL nearly exclusively for classes traditionally taught by lectures (i.e., most courses except skills labs and experientials).  We were a little nervous and anxious at first as well.  Expect a few weeks of the same from your students; after a couple of weeks, most of our students clearly prefer TBL to lecturing and do not want to go back.  It was especially helpful to us to have a TBL expert (we went with authors of the TBL books) provide a workshop for faculty during our first three years.

To answer your questions… With the exception of elective courses, our students remain in the same teams for an entire semester across multiple courses.  Over their three years on on-campus coursework they therefore experience 6 TLB teams.  We now have almost three years of experience with creating application exercises in nearly all areas of the U.S. PharmD curriculum, including the pharmaceutical sciences.

Please feel free to contact me ([log in to unmask]) and I will be happy to help or try to point you in the right direction among our faculty.

Best regards,
Michael

Michael Nelson, PhD, RPh
Chair, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Regis University RHCHP School of Pharmacy H-28
Denver, CO 80221
303-625-1265

Hi
We're introducing TBL into 4 first year courses/modules on our new pharmacy programme at the University of Bradford in the UK at the end of September.
We've read the books and seen the video clips and are really excited (as well as a little anxious) about it. We're in the process of joining the TBLC as an institution so hope to be able to access the member resources soon.
We have a few questions and wondered if anyone could help?

1. All our cohort (~180) will be taking all 4 year-long courses. We're allocating them into groups of 6. Should we keep them in the same groups for all 4 courses? Our thoughts, based on what we've read, is that we should. This would mean they would be in the same groups, working with the same people, for every part of their year one programme. Does anyone have experience of this they could share with us. Advantages/disadvantages?

2. We're busy writing application exercises at the moment. Does anyone have any experiences of application exercises relating to the pharmaceutical sciences, particularly involving practical activities?

3. Is anyone else using TBL in the UK? We've had some advice from the School of Pharmacy at Virginia Commonweath University and an invitation to visit. If anyone in the UK is using it, it may be easier for us to visit.

4. We're hoping to be providing our new cohort with an Android tablet. Has anyone produced a secure App for capturing and recording I-Rat marks?

5. Finally, I'm sorry I couldn't attend the TBLC conference in Florida last week.
Has the date and venue been set for the 2013 conference yet as I hope to attend next year.

Many thanks

Simon Tweddell, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy, Bradford School of Pharmacy, UK. +44 1274 235241