Bullet screen in pre-clinical undergraduate pharmacology education: a survey study

BACKGROUND: The lack of interaction and communication in pharmacology courses, especially since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which required a fast shift to remote learning at medical schools, leads to an unsatisfactory learning outcome. New interactive teaching approaches are required to improve pharmacology learning attention and interaction in remote education and traditional classrooms. METHODS: We introduced bullet screens to pharmacology teaching. Then, a survey was distributed to first-, second- and third-year pre-clinical undergraduate medical and nursing students at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine from November 2020 to March 2022. We evaluated the essential features, instructional effectiveness, and entertainment value of bullet screens. Responses to structured and open-ended questions about the strengths and weaknesses of the bullet screen and overall thoughts were coded and compared between medical and nursing students. RESULTS: In terms of essential features, bullet screens have a high degree of acceptability among students, and this novel instructional style conveniently increased classroom interaction. Considering instructional effectiveness, bullet screen may stimulate students’ in-depth thinking. Meanwhile, students tended to use bullet-screen comments as a way to express their support rather than to make additional comments or to express their different viewpoints. The entertainment value of bullet screen was noteworthy. The lack of ideas might lead to relative differences between medical and nursing students, indicating that guiding the appropriate use of bullet screen is necessary. CONCLUSIONS: The bullet screen may be popularized as an auxiliary teaching approach to promote interaction between teachers and students in the classroom as well as during remote education. It is an interesting and beneficial tool in pharmacology courses, yet there are several aspects of this device that should be improved for popularization. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03906-6.