(112) A Pilot Study to Evaluate Feasibility of a Curriculum Review Process

Objective : To evaluate the feasibility of a PharmD curriculum review process.

Methods: In a pilot project two courses were reviewed using a newly developed innovative curriculum review process. There are three distinct arms of the review process. Two arms cover curricular and assessment aspects and the third arm is a self-evaluation of the course by the course faculty. The assessment arm captured student grades over 3 years and student performance on national exams as relevant to the course objectives. The curriculum arm reviewed the syllabi and compared learning objectives to the current curriculum map and how those were taught and assessed. The course coordinators reviewed the findings, noting any discrepancies in the data from the first two arms and finalized the course self-evaluation for discussion with the Assessment and Curriculum Committees. Notes were collected about the process.

Results: Many of the areas of review were feasible, including breakdown of student final grades. Alternatively, some areas of review were deemed to be challenging to collect or not as directly correlated with course and student success, such as national exam scores and course assessments which have been updated annually.

Conclusions: The curriculum review process was overall easy to use and synthesized objective, accessible, and easy to collect data with regards to curriculum and assessment arms. Faculty involvement enhanced reliability of data and its use for continuous quality improvement. The next step is to assess the effectiveness of the process. One approach would be evaluating the discrepancy in data from curricular and assessment arms versus that of course faculty. Overall, feasibility and effectiveness of a curriculum review process is of utmost importance for successful implementation and meeting the goals of the review.