William C Mobley, Ph.D.

Dr. Mobley is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics and teaches Drug Delivery and Dosage Forms, Problem Solving, Integrated Case Studies and Pharmaceutical Compounding. Prior to his faculty appointment with the UF College of Pharmacy, Mobley held academic appointments at Idaho State University College of Pharmacy and Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy. Prior to embarking on a career as an educator, he was a retail pharmacist, an experience for which he is grateful for enabling him to bring practical insight to basic science knowledge.

A core element of Mobley’s teaching philosophy is to motivate students to engage in effortful and meaningful learning. Learning must be effortful in the sense that it takes significant and sustained personal cognitive effort to develop the knowledge and skills required to become a competent pharmacist. Motivating students to engage in this relatively difficult process of pharmacy education can be accomplished by first striving to continuously show respect and concern for students during all interactions. This is critical in order to build a trust in his efforts to help them achieve their educational goals. Other ways he uses to motivate students are to stimulate curiosity and sustain their engagement by trying making the lectures and other learning activities interesting and relevant to real world practice, so that they are in full accordance with their ultimate goals of becoming a self-confident and competent pharmacist. Elements of these motivational principles, including emphasizing the relevance of what they are learning to real-world practice, are also important for meaningful learning, which is learning-with-understanding that is seen as a process where the student constructs meaning or understanding of new knowledge based on how it integrates with his or her existing knowledge. The better the integration, the deeper and more durable the acquired knowledge can become and be made retrievable from long term memory for acquiring further knowledge and for understanding and resolving patient problems.

· Application of instructional design principles to optimize student pharmacist learning.

· Application of critical thinking and reasoning skills to help develop student pharmacists’ problem-solving abilities.