Why MNspire? New curriculum, new student experience

Photo credit: Bruce Silcox

Fall 2023 marked the first semester of the College of Pharmacy’s new MNspire curriculum in the PharmD program. While updates in curricula every five to 10 years are typical for colleges and universities, MNspire represents more than a mere upgrade in content; it is also an elevation of the student experience. So, why MNspire?

Content structure and integrated learning 

MNspire embodies a more fully-integrated curriculum structure by covering eight designated areas of science identified by instructors, which are taught through a “whole task learning” approach rather than individual courses. This approach aims to both “reduce cognitive load” and utilize “complex cases that contextualize learning,” the MNspire FAQ describes. This curriculum structure also introduces more clinical and social sciences content early on in the PharmD program to help students better bridge their education to real-world patients. 

The college isn’t the first to try integrated learning, but it is perhaps the first pharmacy school to apply a whole task learning model to the entirety of a curriculum.

“We're using an approach that has a lot of evidence-based literature around it, but we're also kind of forging new ground by applying it to a whole curriculum,” said Dr. Jean Moon, associate dean of student affairs. “Whole task learning has been used in courses or modules in our program, but not really to the extent that we're now undertaking.” 

It’s not an uncommon experience for students to perceive that certain content is irrelevant to their future work as a pharmacist. Dr. Todd Sorensen, senior executive associate dean for strategic initiatives and faculty affairs, said a goal of MNspire is to eliminate the chances of students feeling this way.

“We do this right and a student will never say that again. They'll always know why what they're studying today is related to the work of a pharmacist,” said Sorensen. “A student should always know how what they're learning in a particular lesson relates to the work of a pharmacist and the needs of patients and society.”

Redesigning the student experience

The dominant driver behind MNspire is a desire to improve student experience, said Sorensen. The shift to an integrated curriculum was intended to ease the cognitive load of juggling several, independently-designed courses, and instead create an efficient model more conducive to learning. 

MNspire also makes a persuasive argument for students to choose the college over other pharmacy schools. The curriculum introduces advanced pharmacy practice experiences early, offers an entire block dedicated to emerging specialty care, integrates clinical content with foundational science areas, and challenges students with real life issues in pharmacy practice, such as medication shortages. 

Sorensen said the college has always had a very strong clinical program, but MNspire reimagines how a student should experience such a rigorous program. 

“If I'm putting myself in the seat of a candidate who's considering our school, I would hope that this would resonate with them,” Sorensen said. “We've built it into the curriculum from a pedagogical standpoint that's going to create that immersion and engagement that enhances their experience about what it's like to be and think like a pharmacist.”

Building off strong foundations

Improvements aside, MNspire was built on the strong foundation of the preceding CI-1 (“Curricular Integration 1”) curriculum, which hosted several courses where two or three disciplines worked together to sequence and align their content. 

“Those interdisciplinary collaborations helped the MNspire team to identify opportunities for further integration,” said Dr. Kristin Janke, associate dean of assessment, quality and educational development. 

Another CI-1 element continued by MNspire is team-based learning, a “highly-structured instructional sequence that prepares students with foundational knowledge prior to working in teams on application-oriented activities,” she said. In MNspire, team-based learning has expanded and become more multidisciplinary, allowing foundational scientists and clinical practitioners to work together to generate exciting activities that draw all sorts of disciplinary perspectives together. 

“Using this approach, faculty comment regularly on the connections students are making, the quality of the conversations, and the caliber of the questions,” Janke said. She also noted there's a new energy in the classroom “as students learn together in a team format that forms a stepping stone to interprofessional practice.” 

The college’s recently-revised Introductory and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (IPPE/APPE) continue in MNspire but are shifted earlier in the student experience, as students are eager to work with patients and to receive the mentorship of preceptors. Lastly, Janke said that during the build-out of MNspire, faculty have found ways to take new approaches to CI-1; for example, they rearranged schedules to offer a flex day, enhanced the focus on community through new class events, and implemented a text-based AI chatbot providing student services resources 24/7.

Training students to “think like a pharmacist”

Another undertaking when redesigning the student experience was deeply aligning course content to the work of a pharmacist, Moon said. Rather than stressing mere memorization of medications, MNspire is designed to encourage students to “think like a pharmacist,” meaning equipping students to problem-solve in complex patient cases and familiarizing them early on with the real world responsibilities and challenges they will face as pharmacists. Faculty noted in their meetings that having solely significant knowledge of medications is “no longer the foundation for being an excellent pharmacist.” MNspire aims to help students understand how to operate in “the gray areas,” Janke said, a theme she notes is “threaded throughout the curriculum in multiple ways.”

“Ultimately, what does a pharmacist need to do? What decisions do they need to make? What tasks do they need to be able to complete on a daily basis? We need to tie that to all the things they're learning way down to the molecular and cellular level,” Janke said. “Can they see how all of this disciplinary learning allows them to make better decisions and optimize patient care?”

Reconnecting and rebuilding community

Faculty identified a distinct loss of community in the college, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which they sought to remediate by reestablishing strong connections amongst students and faculty and intensifying focus on collaborative learning. 

“We needed to give people a reason to be on campus. Yes, they were disconnected. They were isolated. That's a function of the pandemic,” Sorensen said. “The students did not have a great experience in terms of connectedness during the pandemic and it changed their behaviors. We [instructors] had to change our behaviors, too, to engage them in new ways.” 

MNspire assumed another critical role, then: rebuilding, nurturing, and maintaining a sense of community in the college. 

“Not only were we trying to deliver these critical challenges and get our students thinking about them, but we were intentional about finding new ways to build community,” Moon said. “We're a program across two campuses…We need to make sure that our students feel part of a community, feel connected to the faculty.”

Strengthening connectedness among the college community extends far beyond the pandemic. MNspire aims to foster more communication between instructors and across teams, continuity between learning blocks, and collaboration between disciplines, Janke said. She and others on the MNspire team have been interviewing core participants after the first academic year of the new curriculum, gathering data and evidence around progress the college community is making in those areas. 

“We still have work to do, we didn't just fix all the problems in the first offering,” Janke said. “If you talk to faculty that have been closely involved, they talk about having conversations that they've never had before, and how exciting it is to see how all these disciplines can hand off to one another and ultimately lead to the skills that our students need.”