Pharmacology revealed‐ an enhanced e‐book for midwifery education

Educational resources in pharmacology for programs with a limited scope of practice and a small armamentarium have historically been poor because of the prohibitive cost of publishing high quality, small run textbooks. Electronic publishing allows for the development of inexpensive, sophisticated materials that meet these specific educational needs. E‐books are particularly well suited for pharmacology education because they allow for animations of dynamic processes inherent to pharmacokinetics. In our text, Pharmacology Revealed, animations were blended with immersive case studies developed for the project, computer‐based testing, a pop‐up glossary and links to other e‐resources. Course lecture recordings were transcribed to form the textual foundation of the e‐book while the PowerPoint files served as the basis for animations. The digital layout was accomplished with InDesign and published in HTML 5 as well as in an interactive Adobe PDF file. This fully functional midwifery pharmacology e‐book was developed in eight months and piloted in September 2012. Student evaluation was performed at the end of the course to obtain feedback on the content, layout and functionality. Research focused on learner performance, including knowledge acquisition. The feasibility and educational impact was evaluated using mixed methods research which included a quantitative questionnaire and a qualitative focus group.