(130) Evaluation of a Cross-School, Student-Led Reading Club on Facilitating Learning in Pharmacoepidemiology - Experience of The Tea & Crêpe Reading Club from Taiwan

Publication Number: 461

Background: Thirty must-read pharmacoepidemiology (PE) papers were recommended from a group of senior pharmacoepidemiologists. Using these reading materials, the NCKU Student Chapter created the Taiwan's Easy and relaxing reading club for Assembling the CRoss-school students Enthusing about PharmacoEpidemiology (Tea & CrêPE Reading Club) and invited the students interested in PE from different universities in Taiwan to join. We aimed to nurture interests and knowledge of PE for the attendees. Therefore, it was imperative to evaluate students’ feedback on learning effectiveness.

Objectives: To assess the impact of Tea & CrêPE Reading Club on students’ learning and to collect feedback on the operation of the club.

Methods: From October 2021 to January 2022, in this cross-school, student-led journal reading club, the first series of readings featuring eight online meetings to explore basic method and bias from 11 articles among the 30 must-read materials. A self-reported survey was conducted to obtain feedback from attendees with all evaluations voluntary and anonymous. We collected baseline characteristics including sex, age, and educational background and used the Likert scale to assess the level of understanding of the terminologies and the papers, and the level of comprehension and interest in PE studies. The scores from 0 to 10 indicated the poorest to perfect level of each question. Also, checkboxes were designed to survey the pros and cons of the club. Paired t-test was performed to compare the differences in scores before and after joining the club. Meanwhile, students were free to provide additional suggestions on the overall activity.

Results: A total of 24 students completed the survey; most of them were graduate students in master's or PhD programs. The level of understanding of the terminologies and papers significantly increased from 3.9 to 5.9 and 3.5 to 5.6 (p < 0.01), respectively. The level of comprehension and interest in PE studies also increase significantly (4.0 to 5.8 and 5.0 to 6.5; p < 0.01). They gained the most knowledge from the papers which introduced study design and bias. However, the papers with the topics of misclassification and research philosophy were relatively difficult for the attendees. The top 5 advantages of joining the reading club included learning new PE knowledge, clarifying existing confusion, training logical thinking, building discipline in self-learning and making friends with common research interests.

Conclusions: Tea & CrêPE Reading Club was shown to be beneficial in enhancing students' knowledge and interests in pharmacoepidemiology. The findings can be integrated for curriculum planning on pharmacoepidemiology. Further adjustments are needed to improve research capability for students in Taiwan.