Textbooks that are never outdated

During the state of emergency due to the COVD-19 pandemic, when according to the decree of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, all the educational institutions had to shift to distance education, availability of relevant textbooks and learning materials online became a key issue.

“Not all the textbooks can be used for online learning”, notes the director of the Yerevan Basic Medical College Naira Nersisyan.

“In this regard, the textbooks “Inorganic Chemistry” and “Analytical Chemistry”, authored by Rima Khachatryan, the former Dean of the Department of Pharmaceutics, are simply incomparable”.

The two-volume “Inorganic Chemistry” (ISBN 978-99941-71-19-4) and the one-volume “Analytical Chemistry” (ISBN 978-9939-815-19-0), which have been developed for medical colleges in accordance with the state program in the "Pharmaceutics" discipline, are both learner-centred and user-friendly. Theoretical content in each chapter is complemented with application activities, which considerably facilitates the learning process. Both textbooks have been used as textbooks and as a basis for the courses to teach the relevant curricula in various medical colleges, including Yerevan Basic Medical College, and the state medical colleges of Vanadzor, Kapan Gyumri, Hrazdan and Gavar.

“It’s more than a decade that the textbooks have been used as a basis for the course to teach the relevant curricula in our college, and they meet the contemporary needs of the students the same way they did more than ten years ago”, notes the director of Vanadzor State Medical College Julietta Joklinyan.

“Both textbooks are the key learning resources in the relevant curricula in our college, and compared to other resources, their main advantage is the consistency of the instructional design and the learner-centred approach to presenting the content. Being able to apply the theoretical knowledge through the application and practice activities, the student is given a broader opportunity for self-learning, and does not need a lot of instructional intervention. This is perhaps the best praise to any textbook”, adds the director of Kapan State Medical College Araksya Sargsyan.

Entrepreneur Varduhi Hakobyan, who owns two pharmacies in Yerevan, assures that pharmacists in her stores still refer to the textbooks for assistance with certain tasks; the same textbooks they had used to study inorganic and analytical chemistry in medical colleges.

“While studying in college, thanks to the two volumes of “Inorganic Chemistry” I was able to shape a clear understanding of what pharmaceutics is and how chemical elements and their compounds can be used in medicine. All this knowledge is of enormous use today in my career. Moreover, this textbook is still one of the best reference books I often turn to at work”, says Arpi Hovhannisyan, manager in the “Natalie Pharm” drugstore chain.

Curriculum and education experts claim that availability of such textbooks online will significantly facilitate studies at medical colleges. The staff of the Department of Methodology of the Yerevan Basic Medical College assured our correspondent that they had already undertaken concrete steps towards digitisation of the textbooks. They will be available online quite soon.

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