Exploring the Possible Effect of Virtual Education and face-to-face education methods on the score of Kerman pharmacy students

Pharmacy training is one of the important courses in pharmacy education, its practical parts are trained in educational pharmacies and some parts are taught theoretically. Due to some problems in teaching theoretical parts such as lack of students’ interests, virtual education is employed in this study to compare the possible effect of face-to-face and virtual education on Kerman pharmacy students’ marks in a pharmacy training course.

This study was conducted on 191 pharmacy students in Kerman University of Medical Sciences in the academic years 2017 and 2018 using availability sampling. In the academic year 2017, students who were defined as control group (n=106), taught by lecture method in conventional classroom with practical sessions at pharmacy. In the academic year 2018, the students of experimental group (n=85) were taught through the virtual education using a Learning Management system (Navid) and then practiced at pharmacy like the control group. Independent t and chi-square tests were employed to analyze the gathered data.

The mean score of the experimental group in final exam (14.35±4.42) was significantly higher than of the control group (13.16±3.18) (t=2.097, p=0.038). Using Chi-square test, no statistically significant difference was found in term of male or female participants between the two groups (p=0.151, df=2, X2=3.78). Seventy-three students from the experiment group (85.9%) were tended to be educated by virtual education method in the pharmacy training course.

Virtual education can be considered as a complementary method alongside with traditional-classroom-based teaching. Given the availability of a suitable platform through the Virtual Medical University and students’ satisfaction, blended- pharmacy training course is recommended.