The "Virtual School of Pharmacy Practice" was to be launched by Nottingham University, said Dr Claire Anderson (director of pharmacy practice and social pharmacy, University of Nottingham).
Internet courses were "a giant step forward from traditional distance based learning" and fostered "co-operative group based learning through the building of virtual communities", she said.
For continuing professional development, the internet was a valuable resource, said Dr Anderson. Drug information and research journals could be readily accessed, colleagues could be consulted and courses from all over the world could be undertaken to best suit the individuals needs.
Dr Anderson described the running of a pilot module for an internet course on pharmacy practice. By necessity the first module introduced the students, who had been recruited from throughout the UK and from South Africa, to the internet. A lively debate had been generated and good relationships between the remote students had been developed.
As the module had progressed, the learning process had been transferred to the students, explained Dr Anderson. The internet was a resource based approach to learning and as such the teacher was no longer the main source of knowledge, she said.
Responding to a question about whether the world had too many schools of pharmacy, Dr Anderson said that using the internet was just one way to develop pharmacy as a profession and "as educators we must look to the future". To do this "we need sometimes to suspend our disbelief", she added.
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