Objectives. To assess the impact of teaching strategies on the complexity and structure of students' arguments and type of informal reasoning used in arguments. Design. Students were given an introduction to argumentation followed by 2 formal debates, with feedback provided in between. Assessment. Four debate groups were randomly selected for evaluation. In debate 1, all groups posted 1 argument, and all 4 arguments were rationalistic and ranked as high-level arguments. In debate 2, members of the 4 groups posted a total of 33 arguments, which were evaluated and received an overall median ranking lower than that for debate 1. All debates were categorized as rationalistic. Conclusion. Students were able to formulate rationalistic arguments to therapeutic controversies; however, their level of argumentation decreased over the course of the study. Changes planned for the future include conducting the debates in the context of patient scenarios to increase practical applicability.

This article describes the development and pilot testing of a curriculum of rape-prevention and self-defense skills for visually impaired women. After the course, the women's physical self-defense skills, self-confidence, and understanding of the ability to solve problems in hypothetically dangerous situations increased.

Given changes in the final year pharmacotherapy unit structure and calendar, along with a need to introduce assessments to encourage critical thinking, it was decided that online debates of therapeutic controversies would be beneficial. The primary objective was to assess the impact of teaching strategies on the development of argumentation skills and informal reasoning in pharmacy students. Students were provided with an introduction to argumentation followed by two formal debates, with feedback provided in between. Four debate groups were randomly selected for evaluation. In debate one, all groups posted one argument and all arguments were rationalistic and ranked as Level 3. For debate two, a total of 33 arguments were evaluated, with an overall median ranking of Level 2. Again, all debates were categorised as rationalistic. In general, students felt there was too much workload associated with the assignment. Changes in the future include providing the debates in patient scenarios to increase practical applicability.

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