Persky is currently involved in a project to develop another interactive learning tool. He is part of a team that is creating multimedia modules for the professional pharmacokinetics curriculum. The modules are designed to enable students to learn the basic contents—material that would normally be covered in lectures—before coming to class. Class time would then be used for higher-level learning, such as discussing practical applications.

Around the same time that leaders at the School were looking into the project, UNC Information Technology Services was considering something similar through the Teaching and Learning First Partners Program. The two teamed up to produce a pilot module on the hepatic clearance portion of the curriculum.

“Hepatic clearance is the most difficult material in our course, but it also has a lot of good graphical representational material,” Persky says.

“ITS said, ‘This is exactly what we are looking for, and you guys seem to be prepared, and you already have stuff on the table, so you’ll be our first partner.’”

Persky and Gary Pollack, PhD, the School’s executive associate dean, began working with instructional designers and multimedia developers from ITS. They completed the pilot module, which contains approximately one-and-a-half hours of class material, in fall 2006 and conducted a trial run in one of the classes that semester.

During the hepatic clearance section of the course, half the students in the class attended normal lectures while the other half used the module instead of coming to class. The two groups were given a quiz on the material before and after the lesson. Persky says the quiz scores showed that both groups improved after attending the lecture or using the module, but that there was no significant difference between the two groups.

“I did as well as the module,” Persky says. “Overall I think the students liked coming to class better because they were used to me and the way I talk about things. Students liked the module, too. The modules are great, but we don’t want to lose our human contact. We didn’t want to lose the faculty member. It’s more of ‘You do your job outside of class, and we’ll do our job inside of class.’ ”

The trial results suggested that the modules can be effective in content delivery, and the team began producing a series of ten modules that will encompass the entire course. They will be incorporated into the curriculum in fall 2007. Students will use the modules before attending class and will split into three groups during class to discuss application of the module material. Each module contains a quiz, which will count toward the students’ grades. The modules also will serve as self-assessment tools to help identify areas that students need to work on.

“The course has taken on a very different structure because of these modules,” Persky says. “I’m used to standing in front of 150 people and speaking, whereas now it’s discussion. In order to discuss, you really have to know what you’re talking about, and you have to know how to ask the right questions to bring people out.”

The development team will continue to collect data on the modules via student performance and surveys. The modules also track things such as how much time students spend on a particular section and the steps they take in working through the exercises.

“I think this approach is hopefully more engaging, and if you design it right, it can be engaging and sort of fun,” Persky says. “What we are trying to do is to appeal to a generation born with iPods in their ears.

“It can benefit a lot of courses, but it’ll probably span from being eighty percent module to ten percent module, depending on the course. You still need students to be able to read books and primary literature.”

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