Abstract:

Introduction: The audiovisual media can be used as a tool to transmit knowledge and to improve the comprehension of some concepts. In 2005, the Orfila teaching innovation group of the faculty of Pharmacy launched a series of actions for improving the teaching quality in the field of toxicology, among which, it stands out the incorporation of commercial cinema. A dramatic manifestation of a real fact can facilitate the assimilation of clinical concepts related to drug addiction by students of the bachelor of Pharmacy, and it can offer them some tools to deal with situations which can occur in their professional practice. The principal aim of this work was to select and edit short sequences of 3 to 5 minutes of commercial movies to illustrate the elements of the addictive process (reward, binge, withdrawal and craving). The specific goals were to edit a teaching guide with the contents that the professors have to highlight during the presentation of each sequence and to evaluate the students’ opinion with a questionnaire and the students’ comprehension with a short exam related to drug addiction.

Methodology: The most significant scenes were selected according to their fit with the didactic objectives and the artistic quality of the film. The teaching guides for each clip were designed and the specific questions were prepared. Two groups of students were established: a control group attending to a standard lesson about the addictive process and a group attending to the clips and the attached teaching activities. The lesson time was the same in both groups. The opinion of the students was collected with a Likert test (punctuation 1-5) and the mean and the mode of each affirmation was calculated. The students’ knowledge was evaluated with an unscheduled, anonymous and voluntary exam (punctuation 0-10) with four questions about interpretation of descriptive drug-addiction relates. The statistical analysis of the data was performed using a t-student test.
Results: Clips of the following films were selected: Trainspotting (1996), The barbarian invasions (2003) and Days of wine and roses (1962). The students’ opinion was collected and a general mean of 4 and a mode of 4 were obtained. The mean punctuation for the four questions of the exam between the control group and the group of clips was compared. Statistically significant differences between both groups were obtained (p=0.04). An individual analysis was done for the punctuation obtained in each question. There were not statistically significant differences between groups for the questions related to binge, withdrawal and craving. Only in the question related to reward the group of clips obtained a significantly higher punctuation (p=0.01) than the control group.

Conclusions: The students’ opinion questionnaires indicate a high satisfaction degree with the used methodology. Students considered that it was a useful, visual and dynamic tool, which facilitated their participation and learning. The evaluation of the students’ knowledge using the analysis of the punctuation of each of the proposed questions, as well as the mean punctuation obtained in the exam showed a moderate tendency of understanding improvement in the group with clips, which will be confirmed in a future project.

Keywords:

Short clips, commercial films, addiction, didactic material, improvement of learning.