Applying a Chemical Structure Teaching Method in the Pharmaceutical Analysis Curriculum to Improve Student Engagement and Learning

Pharmaceutical analysis, as the core curriculum of chemistry, chemical engineering, and pharmaceutical engineering, contains broad and in-depth knowledge that leads to massive learning and teaching loads. There are more than 100 analytical methods of medicines in this course. As such, this subject is a big challenge for both students and lecturers. A novel chemical structure teaching (CST) method was developed on the basis of our long-term teaching experience to cope with these challenges. It has been shown in practice that this CST method can significantly unload the stress of students and lecturers simultaneously. The survey about the improvement of students' interests was carried out and listed in the form of questionnaire. The outcome of CST indicates that it can help students to form abilities of critical and logical thinking, motivate them to discuss with their peers and lecturers, and eventually improve comprehensive abilities such as synthesizing information, thinking logically, and analyzing problems independently as well as the average score. Furthermore, CST can be beneficial for lecturers who teach other relevant curricula in chemical or pharmaceutical engineering to improve the teaching outcome, such as organic chemistry, spectrum analysis, pharmaceutical synthesis, and medicinal chemistry. This CST model can also help students cultivate a life-long learning ability as active learners from the cognitive perspective view.