The PharmD program is the same as any other major on campus; every major has requirements that have to be met each year. However, with most pharmacy classes being upwards of a hundred students, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of everyone’s requirements without outside help. For many years, Raabe College of Pharmacy has used the website PharmAcademic to record students’ requirements and provide feedback and clinical assignments called experiential learning (IPPEs for underclassmen and APPEs for P6s). However, this year, there’s been a messy transition to a different website called CORE ELMS.
In the start of the summer semester, students were notified that transition to CORE would be rolled out by June 1st, 2020. This change came from an announcement that the hosts of PharmAcademic, McCreadie Group, Inc. was discontinuing its partnership with all pharmacy colleges by July 11th, 2020. After this date, all collected information on students would be wiped from the databases.
CORE is meant to be a replacement for PharmAcademic’s management of experiential learning, but the system has some serious problems that the school was not ready to assist students with. The system is difficult to log into from the main website because it contains four different systems, three of which: CORE ELMS, MyCred, and CompMS, the school seems to be using. In addition, the first information that was sent in regards to CORE said nothing about using CompMS. This information was sprung on students late August when a leadership and goals statement was meant to be uploaded to the site.
Core Login list (Northern Review photo/Harleigh Bellmann)
CORE is meant to be a replacement for PharmAcademic’s management of experiential learning, but the system has some serious problems that the school was not ready to assist students with. The system is difficult to log into from the main website because it contains four different systems, three of which: CORE ELMS, MyCred, and CompMS, the school seems to be using. In addition, the first information that was sent in regards to CORE said nothing about using CompMS. This information was sprung on students late August when a leadership and goals statement was meant to be uploaded to the site.
While it is fair to say that the school was blinded by the announcement, it is also fair to mention that the response has not given enough assistance to the students who must use this system to bid on future experiential assignments and submit requirements in order to graduate. Most of the information on the website has come in emails during the early transition period. There were no physical or digital conferences, where students could ask questions and get appropriate, timely feedback.
For Cece Speck, P3, CORE could easily become the superior system: “I like how it has external resources linked on the page and a job board, which wasn’t in PharmAcademic. I feel like it is easier to keep track of IPPES, surveys, and other assignments…” This sentiment has been largely repeated across the years, but without a proper introduction, it is difficult to make use of those new intricacies.
At this time, CORE is a more intricate and unintentionally clumsy version of PharmAcademic, and without the college’s assistance, it will remain so.