title: A seminar course on contemporary pharmacy issues.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To implement and evaluate an innovative approach to a pharmacy seminar course intended to develop students' presentation skills and encourage them to think critically about contemporary pharmacy issues.
  
  
  METHODS
  The instructor provided lectures intended to prepare students for their presentations. These lectures included tips on writing abstracts, learning objectives, use of visual aids, and presentation delivery. Pairs of students chose a pharmacy issue, researched their topic including identifying various strengths of evidence to support a perspective, wrote an abstract and learning objectives, prepared their visual aids, and delivered a pro/con perspective. Students also provided peer evaluations for these presentations. A personal response system was used to provide class input on the presentations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Ninety-five percent of the peer evaluations of the presentations were good to excellent. The overall course evaluations indicated achievement of course goals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A pharmacy seminar course intended to develop student presentation skills and critical thinking about contemporary pharmacy issues was demonstrated to be successful. The "taking sides" format was an effective design for accomplishing these objectives.
authors.affiliation: School of Pharmacy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA. tpoirie@siue.edu
authors.forename: Therese I
authors.initials: TI
authors.lastname: Poirier
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003142:Communication; D003479:Curriculum; D004512:Education, Pharmacy / Q000379:methods*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D010380:Peer Review; D013060:Speech; D013339:Students, Pharmacy