Abstract:

This work describes an educational innovative experience that includes a combined Project Based Learning and Simulation Based Learning activity (PBL and SBL, respectively). The experience has been carried out during the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023, within the compulsory subject of Instrumental Analysis, that is taught to the second-year students in the bachelor’s degree of Pharmacy at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. According to the proposed methodology, the students took as their starting point the idea of developing a new analytical method to quantify a compound of their own interest present in food, pharmaceutical, clinical or environmental samples. To this aim, they prepared a proposal and applied for a research project in a simulated call for proposals that was launched by teachers on the virtual campus of the subject. At the end of the semester, a posters session was held where students were invited to present their work as similar to a research diffusion event. This session was also used by teachers as a debriefing session.

Scientific knowledge can be expressed in multiple formats, but for a scientific work to be considered as such, it must conform to certain formal and methodological characteristics that guarantee its rigour. The main objective of the activity is to familiarise students with the usual format of scientific documents, to make them aware about how to prepare a proposal with bibliographic support and to develop oral and written communication skills that they will need in their professional development and, in the near future, in the preparation of their Degree and Master Final Works.

The activity was designed as a complementary task to the syllabus of the subject. 46 students from two course groups voluntarily participated in the activity (45% of total students) and 13 proposals were submitted. The poster presentation and the debriefing session were especially participative and provided an opportunity for students to develop critical thinking by judging their own posters, as well as the posters of the others. Teachers valued the activity as a promising tool for the competence development of the students, that encourages faculty as active-learning environment designers.

Keywords:

Research projects, Project Based Learning, Simulation Based Learning, Teamwork, Communication Skills.