Online Debates to Enhance Critical Thinking in Pharmacotherapy

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of teaching strategies on the complexity and structure of students’ arguments and type of informal reasoning used in arguments. DESIGN: Students were given an introduction to argumentation followed by 2 formal debates, with feedback provided in between. ASSESSMENT: Four debate groups were randomly selected for evaluation. In debate 1, all groups posted 1 argument, and all 4 arguments were rationalistic and ranked as high-level arguments. In debate 2, members of the 4 groups posted a total of 33 arguments, which were evaluated and received an overall median ranking lower than that for debate 1. All debates were categorized as rationalistic. CONCLUSION: Students were able to formulate rationalistic arguments to therapeutic controversies; however, their level of argumentation decreased over the course of the study. Changes planned for the future include conducting the debates in the context of patient scenarios to increase practical applicability.