Experiential learning in undergraduate pharmacy curriculum: A case study of co-operative experience of pharmacy students

This research study explores the co-operative experience of undergraduate pharmacy students with a focus on its influence on the students' professional and personal development. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 19 pharmacy students from the first graduating class in this program, 12 co-op employers, and 12 faculty members. The impact of experiential learning on the professional and personal development of undergraduate pharmacy students during their co-op experiences was multi-dimensional. While students believed that they gained self-confidence and achieved self-discovery and career-related discovery after their co-op placements, their professional and personal development could be driven by their own motivation and personality. Co-op employers and the co-op sites did play a role in influencing students' individual development. Despite the unstructured and inconsistent nature of co-op, it was evident that co-op offered students the opportunity to explore the diversity of the pharmacy profession. Students should take ownership of their learning and faculty should supplement students' learning by using teaching moments at school to reinforce and re-align the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom and those gained during real-world practice. Based on my research, I was able to propose a model of co-op experience integrated in the four stages of Kolb's experiential learning cycle. I concluded that a hybrid of both structured and unstructured experiential learning for pharmacy students might be an ideal curricular model.