The Center for Teaching Excellence presents Featured Teacher Dr. Sarah Melton , Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the Gatton College of Pharmacy
Dr. Melton has a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge that really shows in the classroom. Her drive for teaching excellence has led her to explore and adopt emerging teaching strategies best supported by research, experience, and simple observation of what helps students learn best in the classroom. She puts the learner at the center of her teaching efforts just has she encourages her students to put the patient at the center of their clinical care.
She puts these ideas into action in an integrated series of three courses in Neurologic & Psychiatric Pharmacy she coordinates. When the curriculum was redesigned a few years ago, Dr. Melton pioneered a Team-Based Learning (TBL) approach for the series. In TBL, students work in small teams on active learning exercises such clinical case studies which require them to recall and apply concepts and information from readings they must complete before class. There is minimal lecture, instead students spend class time actively engaged with problems designed to reinforce application of content. Initially, students unfamiliar with TBL may resist it since it requires a lot of work upfront and there is no hiding in the crowd of a lecture hall. But once they get into it, students report higher levels of engagement which their grades reflect.

Authentic assessment is integral part of TBL. Since students must be accountable for a lot of material before class, sessions begin with RATs and TRATs. That’s Readiness Assessment Tests and Team Readiness Assessment Tests. These are short low-stakes quizzes on the content students are to read before class. It functions both to motivate them to do the readings and give the instructor a quick overview of how well the students understand the material and where any problems may be. Students take the RAT alone, then team up and work through the TRAT together. The repeated retrieval and discussion of content helps make it stick. The higher stakes exams in the course follow the same pattern, tests are taken individually and then in teams. The final grade factors in both individual and group test attempts. Teams also do peer assessments of each other’s team performance.
“Students love this type of learning, come to class prepared, and are able to apply their learning to real-life clinical scenarios in the classroom. This leads to long-term retention and application of knowledge.”

Dr. Melton's teaching philosophy is concerned with the heart as well as the head of learners. The integrated series also includes experiences that foster greater self-knowledge and empathy in students by challenging them to focus on the patient before the disease. To this end, Dr. Melton hosts lunch and learns where students and patients from the community can talk and ask questions of each other. “By meeting the patient before learning about the disease, the patient is forefront in the student’s mind.” Though voluntary, lunch and learns are always very well attended. Students also read books written by or from the patient perspective in order to reflect on their own feelings and presuppositions about the disease or condition. They write and discuss how the book has changed their perspective.

These innovative teaching efforts and her many related service and research projects make Dr. Melton a highly regarded and sought after teacher. She is a local resource for TBL which she notes can be applied in many disciplines beyond pharmacy and medicine.
Learn more about Dr. Melton's numerous service and research projects on her faculty profile.