Delivery of Web-based instruction using Blackboard: a collaborative project.

Abstract

The development of writing skills is an important component of the pharmacy curriculum. Recognizing the importance of communication skills, the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE) incorporated oral and written competencies in its standards [1]. Studies, such as those by Holiday-Goodman [2, 3] and Ranelli [4], report the results of several programs incorporating writing skills into the pharmacy curriculum. To address some of the writing skills competencies, a Web-based tutorial, “Introduction to Writing a Research Paper,” was developed as a collaborative project with faculty from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the Health Sciences and Human Services Library. The tutorial was designed as a component of the school of pharmacy's “Population-Based Medical Information Analysis” course during the fall semester of 2001. Because its content is cross-disciplinary, the tutorial was subsequently incorporated into the communication skills training for medical residents in the spring of 2002 and promoted to the campus at large. “Introduction to Writing a Research Paper” is delivered through the campus's Blackboard portal. Blackboard, a software platform for course management, has been adopted as the campus standard for the University of Maryland, Baltimore.