Devin Scott, TLC

Creative news involving Devin Scott, TLC instructional consultant. He is one of four authors on the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) Pharmacy research team, whose first paper was accepted for publication in the journal, Pharmacy, for a special issue on Pharmacy Education and Student/Practitioner training. The team is very excited to share this new case format with other pharmacy schools and healthcare practitioners. This paper focused on educational strategies to teach pharmacy students about diabetes and to prepare these future pharmacists to manage complex diabetic patients.

The CYOA series is very much an interactive process with students and their learning. 178 College of Pharmacy students completed a questionnaire and participated in focus groups. Those 178 students translate to 96% of the second-year College of Pharmacy (COP) students on our three COP campuses (Memphis, Knoxville, & Nashville).  The questionnaires and focus groups gave guidance to creating the CYOA series. The activity was conducted with 186 second-year pharmacy students in a skills-based course. The CYOA activity was administered virtually through a combination of small group work and large group discussion. Additionally, the group was awarded a grant from COP to support the research. The premise is to utilize critical thinking skills and real-world scenarios which move students from academia to application. Devin shared several important takeaways: 1) Students respond really well to engaging activities 2) It’s okay to not be perfect the first time, and 3) It was really rewarding to work with our future pharmacists, and to learn about what it’s like to be a pharmacy student on our campuses. 

Dr. Tom Laughner, TLC Director, reports “Devin has provided invaluable contributions to this project. The paper being published will highlight the great things going on at our institution and its commitment to excellent teaching.”

More in this series is planned, and applause to Devin for his continuing innovative contributions! Below is a link to the actual paper, “Enhancing Student Knowledge of Diabetes through Virtual Choose Your Own Adventure Patient Case Format”: Pharmacy | Free Full-Text | Enhancing Student Knowledge of Diabetes through Virtual Choose Your Own Adventure Patient Case Format (mdpi.com)