Abstract:

According to EHES, education offered by Universities must ensure an integral and continuous development not only of knowledge but also of different competences and skills that future new professionals would need. Active methodologies such as “Cooperative learning” (CL) might be suitable strategies in the development of some of these competences and skills and also for the long-term strong knowledge. With this idea, this work is presented as a CL experience carried out with a group o students of the subject “Biopharmacy and Pharmacokietics” (fourth year of Pharmacy Grade) in the Pharmacy Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). This study was part of a project of “Improvement and innovation of the Educational Quality of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM 2009-276)”. This experience was tested in a group of 63 voluntary students (assistance 100%). 9 groups of 7 students each were separated. Every member of every group was chosen as “specialist student ” of one of the seven topics in which was divided the block of “Pharmacokinetic”, essential part of the subject “Biopharmacy and Pharmacokinetic”. The responsibilities of each “specialist student” were: (1) To follow the master class of their specific topic, prepared by the professor. (2) To deeply analyse and study the corresponding topic, resolving all questions and doubts with the professor. (3) To explain the designed topic to the rest of the students component of his/her team, and also to response their answers and doubts (the “specialist” student acts as professor while the real professor only supervises the situation to solve punctual problems).
Students-Professor communication (activity organization, interchange of documents and information) was performed through the UCM Virtual Campus website (based on WebCT platform). This platform was also widely used for the inter-student communication. The evaluation of the specific knowledge acquired by the students after following this CL experience was carried out by a written exam of each topic. In those evaluations the qualification of each “specialist” was conditioned by the mean mark obtained by their whole group in the exam of the corresponding topic. In order to determine whether the high qualification obtained by the “specialist” students was really due to the CL experience or was a logical consequence of having followed the master classes offered by the professor, a comparison was performed with the qualification obtained by students having followed “traditional teaching” (only master classes) by the same professor. Finally, all students experiencing this CL methodology answered a short question list in which the following aspects were evaluated: (1) Effort needed to assimilate new concepts. (2) Time dedicated to this block of the subject. (3) Understanding of the selected topics. (4) Responsibility in their own learning. (5) Acquisition of general competences (communication skills, teaming, collective responsibility, etc.).

Results demonstrated that the CL methodology allowed students to develop/improve some useful general competences of high future interest for students, such as communication skills, teaming or collective responsibility. Furthermore, this cooperative learning methodology also helped students to strongly retain knowledge for more prolonged periods of time, thanks to the personal work and personal implication in the project.

Keywords:

Pharmacy Grade, cooperative learning, active participation, collective responsibility, teaming.