Are fishbowl activities effective for teaching pharmacotherapy and developing postformal thought in pharmacy students? A pilot study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Case based learning is a commonly used pedagogy to facilitate active learning and development of problem-solving skills, however its utility may be limited in a large lecture environment. Fishbowl activities have been utilized in higher education to encourage discussion and postformal thinking and may be useful in engaging large class sizes in collective problem-solving activities. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY AND SETTING: The fishbowl activity took place in a second-year six-credit hour infectious disease course delivered in the spring of 2017, consisting 95 students. A pre-post survey was administered via Google® forms and consisted of demographic items (age, race, gender), students' self-reported level of preparation, perceived benefits of the activity, strengths and weakness of the fishbowl activity, and postformal thought using the Complex Postformal Thought (PFT) questionnaire. FINDINGS: Aggregate mean postformal thinking score was 51.98 in the pre-survey and 56.26 in the post-survey (p < 0.05). A majority of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the activity helped them learn, was better than traditional lecture, and helped them prepare for material that would be on the exam. DISCUSSION: Overall, this activity was generally well received by the students and may have positively impacted their postformal thinking. It appears that the fishbowl activity concept may transfer easily to pharmacy education and be an additional active learning tool for pharmacy educators based on these limited pilot results. SUMMARY: Fishbowl activities may be a valuable educational tool for the development of postformal thinking skills in pharmacy students. Further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness and applicability of using this active learning approach in pharmacy education.