Fig 1.
Timeline of the delivery of the two pharmacology topics: Routes of administration (ROA) and drug toxicity and interactions (TOX).
ROA was delivered to Student Group 1 via high-fidelity simulation and to Student Group 2 via a case-based tutorial during the fourth week of the course. TOX was delivered during the tenth week of the course to Student Group 1 via a case-based tutorial and to Student Group 2 via high-fidelity simulation. ICA, In-course assessment.
Fig 2.
Data collection points superimposed on the timeline of the course delivery.
ROA, Routes of administration topic; TOX, drug toxicity and interactions topic; ST-Quiz, Short-term quiz; LT-Quiz, Long-term quiz; ICA, in-course assessment; Survey Quant., quantitative survey; Survey Qual., qualitative survey.
Fig 3.
Mind map deployed as a tool to facilitate the qualitative analysis.
Table 1.
Distribution of learners across teaching modalities vis-à-vis quizzes.
Table 2.
Short-term and long-term knowledge retention and change in knowledge retention in high-fidelity simulation versus case-based tutorial sessions.
Fig 4.
The study’s conceptual framework: Differentiators of pharmacology teaching modalities.
Table 3.
Semi-quantitative tally of the output of the participant-focused qualitative analysis.
Fig 5.
Bar graph illustrating the students’ preference and perceived usefulness of high-fidelity simulation versus case-based tutorial sessions for delivery of pharmacology teaching.
Fig 6.
Output of the iterative joint display analysis process, resulting in three meta-inferences: Satisfaction, Preferences, and Retained Knowledge.
The secondary colour Purple emerged by mixing the primary colour Red with the primary colour Blue (which constitutes an analogy of the lateral and critical thinking that took place to generate the meta-inferences from the integration of two sets of primary inferences). For the ‘Satisfaction’ meta-inference, integrating the quantitative with the qualitative inferences led to an expansion in the overall viewpoint. For the ‘Preferences’ meta-inference, the integration led to both: confirmation and expansion of the overall viewpoint. As for the ‘Retained Knowledge’ meta-inference, the integration led to the refinement of the overall viewpoint.