Taxonomy and structure of the Pharmacology Education Project website

抄録

The need for bringing pharmacological sciences education to a broader audience provided the stimulus for the creation of the Pharmacology Education Project (PEP) by IUPHAR as a companion website for the Guide to Pharmacology. In this presentation, the taxonomy and structure of the PEP website will be described. The material provided on the PEP website is organized in an intuitive, hierarchical structure divided into four general sections: Pharmacology, Clinical Pharmacology, Drugs and Therapeutics. An introductory text is included in each section emphasizing the relevance of the section to learners and explaining the content structure. Each section is divided into modules, for example, Pharmacodynamics under the section, Pharmacology. Every module includes descriptive text explaining the module content in clear and simple English broken up into easily read paragraphs including simple tables or diagrams. Each module houses reports on several topics, each of which has a summary text highlighting the most important aspects of the topic. For example, therapeutic index under the module Pharmacodynamics. The hallmark of the PEP website is the attachment of other learning resources (e.g. web-links, articles, video and audio files, PowerPoint files) each with its own short commentary to the summary text. These short commentaries provide enough information to help the viewer decide whether the attached learning resources are appropriate for their needs without having to examine the resource. The commentary includes a summary of the linked content, the relation of the linked content to the topic, potential use of the linked content in learning, and prerequisite topics. A user-friendly online submission tool helps authors navigate through the sections, modules, and topics in submitting content. Content submitted by the international pharmacology community is vetted by members of the PEP Editorial Board. The PEP website is a simple, attractive, easily searchable resource that supports students of the biomedical sciences, medicine, nursing and pharmacy as well as those who teach them.