Abstract:

Spanish universities are immersed in a process of adaptation to the European Higher Education as a step in the planned European convergence scheduled for 2012.
In this scenario, a coordinated curriculum in depth and a deep reorganization of the activities are subject to meet European requirements to ensure success. In this work, the development of activities with a clear transversal character in the subject Biology within the degree in Medicine during its first year of implementation is proposed.
The Degree in Medicine is in its first year of implementation at the Universitat Jaume I. At this point, it is of key importance to narrowly define the activities to develop and the skills to achieve in every subject. The acquisition of other skills or competences of transversal application by the student will be held in parallel to the acquisition of the specific competences. This will facilitate the task of learning and will definitely result in several benefits to students.
The transitional nature of every first year on one hand fosters the implementation of these educational strategies but at the same time the difficulty of high school students to adjust to this dynamic of learning hampers any new implementation. Therefore, the implementation of these strategies needs to be gradual in order not to overload their working hours and thus make the more out of it. In addition, this project is intended to be implemented in the context of horizontal coordination (between the subjects of the same course) and vertical (between subjects in different courses). This aspect in the "Degree in Medicine" is considered a priority. In the traditional system of education, working methods and habits acquired by students can be forgotten from one year to another. Therefore, the proposed changes entail great benefits for students due to vertical coordination.
The Biology course is an eminently fundamental subject in the “Degree in Medicine”. This subject has as specific competences to understand all aspects of cell physiology, cells are the most elemental physiological units of all living organism, and the assimilation of several basic concepts of cell biology. During the course, it is proposed the development of seminars by groups of students. The objective in these seminars is to further expand proposed topics including the clinical aspects that are not considered in the theoretical part of the subject. During the development of this part of the course, students are expected to achieve competences such as the use of scientific databases, handling and managing large amount of information and, more important, learn the importance of teamwork.

Keywords:

Seminars, scientific databases, teamwork, transversality.