BackgroundContinuing pharmacy education is becoming mandatory in most countries in order to keep the professional license valid. Increasing number of pharmacists are now using e-learning as part of their continuing education. Consequently, the increasing popularity of this method of education calls for standardization and validation practices. The conducted research explored validation aspects of e-learning in terms of knowledge increase and user acceptance.MethodsTwo e-courses were conducted as e-based continuing pharmacy education for graduated pharmacists. Knowledge increase and user acceptance were the two outcome measured. The change of knowledge in the first e-course was measured by a pre- and post-test and results analysed by the Wilcoxon signed–rank test. The acceptance of e-learning in the second e-course was investigated by a questionnaire and the results analysed using descriptive statistics.ResultsResults showed that knowledge increased significantly (p < 0.001) by 16 pp after participation in the first e-course. Among the participants who responded to the survey in the second course, 92% stated that e-courses were effective and 91% stated that they enjoyed the course.ConclusionsThe study shows that e-learning is a viable medium of conducting continuing pharmacy education; e-learning is effective in increasing knowledge and highly accepted by pharmacists from various working environments such as community and hospital pharmacies, faculties of pharmacy or wholesales.

Doctoral training was included in the Bologna system as the third cycle. The important consequence of this change is that the doctoral studies became more structured, and most universities now train doctors in a shorter time period than in the past, mostly in 3 to 4 years. The National Association of PhD students from Serbia (Doktoranti Srbije) conducted the same survey in the form of a questionnaire three years in a row (2010)(2011)(2012). In 2010 the survey received 335 responses, in 2011 there were 557 responses and in 2012 there were 625. The survey results showed that doctoral candidates recognise supervision as a key issue that need to be improved. Surveyed individuals emphasised the impact of the supervisor's engagement on the quality of their PhD projects. Supportiveness is the quality that PhD students value the most. This involves supervisors being encouraging, and aware that students' lives extend beyond the PhD. Other key areas for improvement, according to Serbian PhD candidates, are financing and mobility, especially international mobility.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) aim at unlimited participation and open access via the web. There are concerns about the actual value of such courses. This is predominantly due to higher dropout rates. According to studies, only 7-13% go on to complete these courses. The high dropout rate in MOOCs is a challenge for education providers. This paper aims to explore reasons for high dropout rates within MOOCs and how they can be minimized. With this in mind, two research questions have been set for this study: 1) Why do MOOC participants not complete their courses? 2) How can the course completion rate be increased? Implementation of the strategies investigated in this paper can increase completion rates in MOOCs. In conclusion, after analyzing the collected data, the final results have shown that gamification increased the completion rate of MOOCs.

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