DIGITAL LIBRARY
LEARNING PILLS FOR BASIC TRAINING IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Univesity of Vigo (SPAIN)
About this paper:
Appears in: EDULEARN09 Proceedings
Publication year: 2009
Pages: 1320-1325
ISBN: 978-84-612-9801-3
ISSN: 2340-1117
Conference name: 1st International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 6-8 July, 2009
Location: Barcelona ,Spain
Abstract:
Along our work life, most of what we learned and use is the result of infinity of small training moments. Therefore, being able to learn in small dosages would be useful.
Knowledge Pills also called learning pills are a tool that is beginning to be used at International level in education. These pills are small nuggets of training information, available to any person, when and where they are needed. They are written by an expert in the field. They are designed to be interesting, compelling, and where applicable interactive.
The Knowledge Pills can take several formats, all depending of the needs and capabilities of the students, such as video streaming, flash presentations or enhance presentations with video and audio. The pills can be used by anyone, with very small training requirements.
This technique is the way to understand a specific contain in approximately 20 minutes. A Knowledge Pill allows you to understand a new concept, technology or new trend. Then, this permit you to learn something new if a good development of the subject exists, with precision level and having specialized knowledge like basics. These Learning Pills must be organized by fields of knowledge.

Depending on the specific politics of each University, there will be two versions: Internet version, opened to everyone, or Intranet version, to use through a local network.
Based on the definition of Learning Pills, it is an easy tool to be used by the students who need to have a sound grounding in general subjects in Engineering field. One of these subjects is Chemistry. These pills can be used like support to Zero Course of Engineering.
An innovative experience has been carried out at University of Vigo creating different Knowledge pills about basic concepts in Chemical, such as Equilibrium Chemistry. These pills can be applied at Zero Course of Industrial Engineering, Zero Course of Post-graduated courses or even in learning experiences in Primary and Secondary School.

Keywords:
learning pills, reusable learning objects, multimedia-learning contents.