Redesigning the Structure of a Health Informatics Course to Support Digital Problem-based Learning in Programming Languages

For health professionals such as pharmacists, we have teaching experience since opening the master's degree. A course, namely “Computer Systems and Principles of Programming for Pharmaceutical and Health Informatics” in Master Degree of Pharmacy (Health Informatics), was redesigned to improve learning outcomes. The programming module was set in the second part of the course after a midterm examination with the classical course structure. Therefore, there was no time left to assign an advanced project to students. When the programming module shifted to the upper part, students could spend self-study time of the lower module to create more advanced applications in pharmacy and health. Digital problem-based learning (DPBL) was applied to support students and instructors to communicate and collaborate their work in the real production environment. The course structure was redesigned in the 2020 academic year which the COVID-19 situation has interrupted the real face-to-face learning. Therefore, the full DPBL was used. In addition, a set of tools were introduced to students for working in the fully DPBL. After the course was finished, an evaluation of the applications from students was done by three instructors. Students could deliver more advanced web applications from DPBL than those from the simple assignments in the classical course structure. Furthermore, the redesigned course structure and DPBL were evaluated by students. The results suggested that the redesigned course structure and DPBL were used, and skills in programming languages were increased.