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A colleague of mine once shared a story he heard of an organic chemistry teacher who would tell people he had one of the most important, lifesaving jobs in the world. Why? Because he made sure academically unprepared premed students never made it to medical school. Teachers can have many possible motivations for maintaining high academic standards in their courses. A desire to ensure future health practitioners are adequately prepared to engage in the intellectual rigor of their profession may be just one of them., (© 2020 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.)

Objective. To create a demonstration that would enhance student understanding of the following acid/base concepts: the opposing effects of a weak acid and its conjugate base, the acidifying effects of carbon dioxide on blood pH, and the resistance of a buffered solution to changes in pH. Methods. The demonstrations were delivered to four different years of first-year pharmacy (P1) students in three different ways: as live in-class demonstrations, as a series of three short videos posted online, and as a series of three short videos used both in class and posted online. Quizzes were administered to each set of students and qualitative feedback solicited. Comparisons were made between the four classes that received the demonstrations and with two previous classes that had not received the demonstrations but had been given the same quiz questions. Results. Student feedback indicated difficulty seeing and understanding the live demonstrations, and the demonstration videos were not widely used when they were posted online. However, students provided positive feedback on demonstration videos when they were used in class in addition to being posted online. Using videos, performance increased on quiz items related to the learning objectives of the demonstrations, returning to levels seen in years prior to the decline in student performance. Conclusion. When delivered appropriately, a series of pH demonstrations appeared to improve student assessment performance.

Objectives: To develop and evaluate a board game designed to increase students' enjoyment of learning metabolic pathways; their familiarity with pathway reactions, intermediates, and regulation; and, their understanding of how pathways relate to one another and to selected biological conditions., Design: The board game, entitled Race to Glucose, was created as a team activity for first-year pharmacy students in the biochemistry curriculum., Assessment: A majority of respondents agreed that the game was helpful for learning regulation, intermediates, and interpathway relationships but not for learning reactions, formation of energetic molecules, or relationships, to biological conditions. There was a significant increase in students' scores on game-related examination questions (68.8% pretest vs. 81.3% posttest), but the improvement was no greater than that for examination questions not related to the game (12.5% vs. 10.9%)., Conclusion: First-year pharmacy students considered Race to Glucose to be an enjoyable and helpful tool for learning intermediates, regulation, and interpathway relationships.