Faculty members in pharmacy schools around the world need to foster a culture of integrity amongst their students, to mitigate against potential cheating, Monash University Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Education, Senior Lecture, Professor Dan Malone believes.
Addressing an International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) webinar last night, Malone said that promoting ethical behaviour from an early stage in students' time at university was key to combatting the urge to cheat.
"It is really important to normalise the conversation of integrity to assist in creating a culture where students will be less inclined to cheat," he said.
"This can include talking to students early and often about aspects of integrity, giving examples of academic integrity breaches and discussing it with students - notice learners in particular don't understand university rules around plagiarism and collusion.
"Getting all students into the mind set of being a pharmacist in training [is also useful].
"Reminding students of the Oath of the Pharmacist, that talks about holding oneself to the highest standards and ethical conduct."
Speaking about planning for student assessments during the COVID-19 crisis, University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health, Pharmacy Practice, Associate Professor Rebekah Moles, advised her peers around the world to "think like a naughty student".
"The way we have to get around that is we actually need to think like a naughty student," she said.
"We have to work out how they might cheat."
She added that pharmacy schools might need to reassess their written exams to allow them to be conducted online.
"Why don't you think about 'what if it's open book and they can look up things on the internet'?" she asked.
"If we ask more of the what questions and more of the why questions perhaps we can mitigate or limit the amount they can look up, because they're much more difficult to explain."
She added that text matching software could be used to identify possible plagiarism.
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