Applying a Chemical Structure Teaching Method in the Pharmaceutical Analysis Curriculum to Improve Student Engagement and Learning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel chemical structure teaching method for pharmaceutical analysis that enhances student engagement, reduces stress, and improves learning outcomes by fostering critical thinking and peer discussion.

Contribution

The study presents a new CST approach based on extensive teaching experience, demonstrating its effectiveness in improving student interest, critical thinking, and grades in pharmaceutical analysis.

Findings

CST significantly reduces student and lecturer stress.

Students show increased interest and critical thinking skills.

Grades improve with the implementation of CST.

Abstract

Pharmaceutical analysis, as the core curriculum of chemistry, chemical engineering and pharmaceutical engineering, contains broad and in-depth knowledge that leads to massive learning & teaching loads. There are more than 100 analytical methods of medicines in this course. As such, this subject is a big challenge for both students and lecturers. A novel chemical structure teaching (CST) method was developed based on our long-term teaching experience to cope with these challenges. It has been shown in practice that this CST method can significantly unload the stress of students and lecturers simultaneously. The survey about the improvement of students' interests was carried out and listed in the form of questionnaire. The outcome of CST also indicates that it can help them to form abilities of critical and logical thinking as independent learners, motivate them to discuss with their peers and lecturers, and eventually improve average grades. Furthermore, CST can be beneficial for lecturers who instruct other relevant curriculum in chemical or pharmaceutical engineering to improve the teaching outcome, such as organic chemistry, spectrum analysis, pharmaceutical synthesis and medicinal chemistry. This CST model can also help students cultivate lifelong learning ability as active learners and habit from the cognitive perspective view.