Teaching staff
General questions regarding this course should be directed to the course coordinator
Additional facilitators
Teaching
Tutorials will be held weekly during the first semester on Thursdays 10.30
am - 12.30 pm in the Seminar Room 502-046, ground floor, building 502. These sessions
are compulsory, and if a student is absent, a medical certificate must be supplied.
Some of these sessions will consist of presentations/discussions led by the lecturer,
whilst others will be in the form of presentations by the students. In the latter,
students are expected to find key references on a particular topic (provided by
the lecturer in charge), digest this information, and present a brief 15 min overview
to the class using a power point presentation. Copies of the key reference(s) and
the power point presentation should also be made available to the class and the
facilitator, who will make the material available on Cecil.
Reading
Most of the reading that you should be doing for this course should be of recent
papers and reviews. You must also be able to use the internet to search Medline
and Pubmed. If you are not familiar on how to search and retrieve research articles
and reviews, you can
arrange a tutorial with the Philson Library staff.
Assessment
- Review essay 25%
- Final exam 75%
Review essay
One in-depth review (min 3000 words) on an assigned topic will be required to be
submitted by 5pm Monday 12th May, 2008. This review must be in your own words, and
be fully referenced in the Vancouver style.
Further information and examples of this style of referencing can be found at the
website for the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: http:/www.icmje.org.
ReferenCite is a good
resource run by the Student
Learning Centre (SLC). The SLC runs workshops on referencing and offers
learning support resources. Learn more about:
The Vancouver style of referencing
Directly after the piece of information, you should include a number, which relates
to the relevant reference listed at the end of your review. At the end of your review
you should list all the information sources you have used. Citation format for textbooks
and journal articles are different. A textbook citation should contain the names
of the authors or editors, the title of the book (including the edition), the name
of the publisher, the year of publication (in that order), and the page number.
- Katzung BG. Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (7th edition). Appleton & Lange.
1998, p121.
A listing for a journal article should contain (in order) the names of the authors,
the year it was published, the title of the article, the name of the journal, the
issue and the page numbers where the article can be found.
- Connor B, Kozlowski DA, Schallert T, Tillerson JL, Davidson BL, and Bohn MC. (1999)
Differential effects of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in the
striatum and substantia nigra of the aged parkinsonian rat. Gene Therapy 6: 1936
– 1951.
You should try to limit the use of direct quotes to an absolute minimum and
these should be no more than a sentence or two. Under no circumstances should you
directly quote paragraphs of information. When using a direct quote the material
should be in quotation marks and the citation you use should include the relevant
reference number and the number of the page it came from.
- “Activation of the cyclase enzyme is mediated by the stimulatory coupling protein
Gs” (1, p121).
Wherever possible, direct quotes should be avoided. You should try to put ideas
into your own words. Please note that changing or removing the odd word does not
constitute your own words. You should try to integrate information from several
sources and construct your own sentences and paragraphs, therefore demonstrating
that you understand the information and concepts.
Scientific information obtained from the internet should be treated with great caution/suspicion.
A lot of information on the internet is not peer-reviewed, so it has not necessarily
been checked or verified as being correct.
Review submission
Both a hard copy and electronic copy must be submitted. The latter is to be submitted
to turnitin.com for plagiarism
checking.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is taking and using another person’s thoughts, writings or inventions
and presenting them as if they were your own. If you wish to include another author’s
words in your essay, enclose the text within quotation marks and cite the author.
Plagiarising and other forms of intellectual dishonesty undermine the foundations
of both the university and scientific research. The scientific community must rely
on the trustworthiness of researchers and of the reports they publish; plagiarism
and fraud undermine that trust.
The penalties for plagiarism and other dishonest practices, as listed in the
Examination Regulations of the University Calendar include cancellation of obtained
passes and disqualification from completing courses.
More information on plagiarism is available at:
- Avoiding plagiarism
- Plagiarism:
What it is and how to recognize and avoid it
- University of Auckland policy on cheating and plagiarism
Guidelines
The review is worth 25% of the total marks for this paper. It is suggested that
the review should consist of a brief summary/abstract, a contents page, a list of
abbreviations and figures, the main body of the review, followed by complete references.
Use diagrams where appropriate to illustrate points or concepts. Plenty of recent
references will be expected. Students should consult the journals such as “Drugs”
and “Clinical Pharmacokinetics” for examples of typical reviews, and for the standards
to strive for.
20/25 marks for this review will be assigned to the content, with the remaining
5/25 marks for lay-out, references and grammar/spelling and punctuation, and general
presentation.
Students are expected to give a 10 - 15 minute oral presentation of their essay
topic using power point on Thursday 22nd May. If they fail to do this they will
receive zero mark for their essay.
Final exam
The final exam is worth 25% of the total marks for this paper. It will be conducted
by the University in the examination period and will be 2 hours duration. It will
cover all material from tutorials/seminars/essays.
Past exam papers are available for download from the Library Exam Database.
Note: The forerunner to this course was PHARMCOL 712 (DRUG DISPOSITION AND ACTION),
and previous years final exam papers for the latter are available on the exam database
by searching for PHARMCOL 712.
Departmental seminars
Students are requested to attend the Departmental seminars which are to be held
on the last Friday of the month 3.00 - 4.00 pm in Room 3205, followed by drinks
& nibbles in the Pharmacology Tearoom/Discussion Room.
Learning outcomes
A student who has successfully completed this course will have:
- An in-depth knowledge of the mechanisms involved in the absorption, distribution,
metabolism and excretion (ADME) of drugs, and an appreciation of the current issues
in this field.
- An understanding of the broad conceptual elements of pharmacokinetics, and the time
course of drug action.
- An understanding of current issues and advances in drug development.
- The skills in gaining access to, and critically analyzing pharmacological information
from a variety of sources.
- An advanced capacity for the critical evaluation of relevant research literature
in Pharmacology, and the ability to organize and communicate this knowledge in a
written review.
- A capacity to summarize knowledge in ADME, and succinctly communicate this knowledge
to others in oral presentations.
- Developed group working skills, and the management of his/her own learning needs.
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