Hi, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I run a distance learning programme for pharmacists working in practice in England. We have learnt several lessons over the past 3 years.
Keep pre work level to a minimum. We provide 4 hours per unit (1 unit every month) . We have CORE learning and then we also provide refreshers and additional/optional for the super keen. The RAPs are based on CORE only.
We run the iRAT asynchronously using InteD - they can join when they want over a 7 days opening period.
Keep LIVE sessions to min time = 2.5 hours - within which we run the tRAT, instant feedback and AEs. The students love this and value the experts we have that join to faciltate the discussions. We also record these for any students who cannot attend or want to watch them again.
Out pathway is NHSE funded so we have found that we ran the LIVE sessions at different times and on different days including evenings that the attendance in the evenings was so low that we have now stopped doing this. At the start of the prog., we now ask line managers to agree to release the students to attend the live sessions once a month and ensure work place support. Ultimately this traning is to make them better practitioners so the long term benefit of this is IS to the NHS and patients.
Do not undercut the time spent at the beginning of the course explaining TBL, VLES and IT. This is invalulable time and you can find literature about ‘orientation’ and how important it is which I would whole heartedly agree on.
I am running a webinar via InteD in Oct about all of this. In essence, I would never return to didactic teaching, students really value TBL and there are ways to ensure it is a success but also you learn to tweak over time based on feedback and your own observations.
We also use TBL for our Diplomas and pharmacists there work in practice and then attend on campus study days.
I hope this helps and I am happy to provide more ideas or tips if needed.