Applicant:
Prof. David Dewhurst
College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine,
University of Edinburgh, the UK

The Virtual Pharmacology Lab is an open access repository of quality assured learning objects designed to support pharmacology practical teaching. The aim is to promote sharing and re-use of existing pharmacology resources to enhance teaching and learning and reduce animal use in education. Currently the repository contains >650 learning objects that are in fact the disaggregated components of eleven existing computer-based simulations of practical pharmacology classes developed by one of the authors (David Dewhurst) - brief descriptions can be found at www.sheffbp.co.uk.

The learning objects include: data traces - showing how a particular tissue preparation responds to a change in experimental parameters (e.g. administration of a drug/drug combination, electrical stimulation); textfiles e.g. a description of an experimental protocol, the experiment method; images, diagrams, illustrations; video – e.g. an illustration of how a preparation is dissected, set-up in an organ bath; interactive student tasks, activities and self-assessment questions. Teachers of pharmacology are encouraged to tailor their teaching by embedding/incorporating the learning objects of the repository into their own teaching materials e.g. a website, PowerPoint presentation, e-book. While the repository content is currently limited to the author’s materials it is hoped that other pharmacologists/physiologists will wish to contribute additional resources and make these freely available to colleagues for (non-profit) teaching purposes under the same Creative Commons license.

To access the repository please click the following link: www.virtualpharmacologylab.com