Pharmacy Department - Course Design and Assessment Strategies for Higher Education

A workshop on "Course Design and Assessment Strategies for Higher Education"
To enhance the quality of higher education, an interactive workshop titled "Course Design and Assessment Strategies for Higher Education" took place on Thursday, November 9, 2023, from 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM at the old MPH. Dr. Badriya Mohammed Al-Nadabi, an Independent Educational Expert, was invited by The Pharmacy Department at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in Muscat to lead this workshop.
The workshop aimed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of the development of outcome-based learning objectives (OBLO), active learning strategies, and assessment methods, emphasizing their interconnected roles. The primary objective was to empower educators and curriculum developers with the requisite knowledge and skills to formulate effective course designs and curriculum mapping, underscoring the significance of aligning OBLO with active learning and assessment.
Throughout the workshop, exploration into the relevance of these concepts to student attributes, higher-order thinking skills, employability skills, and 21st century skills in the context of modern education were undertaken and participants had a number of hands-on experiences where multiple tasks required their interaction. By the workshop's conclusion, participants had grasped the importance of OBLO in curriculum development, articulated the interconnection between OBLO, active learning strategies, and assessment methods, applied best practices in course design and curriculum mapping incorporating OBLO, identified effective strategies for online and technology driven teaching, selected appropriate assessment methods aligned with OBLO for meaningful student progress evaluation, and recognized the broader relevance of these concepts in fostering students' attributes and advancing higher-order thinking skills, employability skills, and 21st century skills.
The pharmacy department expresses gratitude to Dr. Badriya AL Nadabi for generously sharing valuable expertise and we look forward to future collaboration with her.