Abstract

PERCEPTIONS OF INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS IN TEAM TEACHING IN DUBAI PHARMACY COLLEGE

Heyam Ali*, Rasha Saad, Babiker El-Haj

Abstract

The aim of this primary study is to identify students' perspectives, analyze the issues involved with team teaching in interdisciplinary courses and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of team teaching before implementation in Dubai Pharmacy College, UAE. Participants included 76 students, second year class, (female) and two full time faculty members act as course instructors, responsible for teaching physical pharmacy and Biopharmaceutics interdisciplinary courses. All respondents had no prior experiences with team taught classes. The main research method was a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The research data included student scores, structured designed questionnaires, teachers’ self-reflection and students' perception. The research findings showed that the two teaching methods showed significant difference in respect of students’ perception. More than half of the experimental students preferred team teaching to traditional teaching. The reflection of team teachers’ expectations of team teaching and its implementation was evident. The differences in the teaching strategy also exposed team teachers to challenge and being compared with each other by students in class. In addition, the team teachers had been unprepared for this comparison, especially in regard to class management. The implementation of team teaching, however, was not approved by the college administration, due to time consuming in preparation of the session, which and caused students support regarding team teaching. Limitation of this primary research study concentrated on little number of subjects, only one class participation and instructors' inadequate preparation of team teaching session, overload of faculty members in the interdisciplinary courses, made the implementation of team teaching bit difficult. The key to this lies with teachers, who are required to do this actively; otherwise, educational goals will not be achieved. Therefore, a further research studies were needed.

Keywords: Teaching physical pharmacy and Biopharmaceutics interdisciplinary courses.