Abstract:

Declaration of Bologna brought important changes in the way of teaching to the Spanish Universities, leading to an improvement on student learning. The use of new pedagogical methods implies supplementary training, even for teachers with a long professional experience. Similarly, planning and structuring a presentation by a student team requires an adaptation process for students, and the aim of the present work was to detect these difficulties, in order to improve the learning skills of students. This new methodology aims to achieve a real training in Physiology by catching the students inside a “net of coherence”. That means to design a situation where the students are forced to admit the necessity of asking questions and to find solutions to problems that they will face in their future professional life.
Selected students from the Physiology training program in the degree of Pharmacy at the University of the Basque Country were organized in teams and asked to prepare the presentation of a topic, which is a common requirement in many courses. Presentations included visual aids, exposition in front of an audience and were followed by a discussion with the teacher and other students.
Stage fear and how to answer to teacher’s questions were the main problems found by students. However, they found quite easy to explain concepts, as well as to understand these concepts when they were explained by other students. No problems related to the management of visual aids used for expositions were found. Although the students did not accept well this task at first, they were proud of the final results and they acknowledged to have enjoyed their team work. Thus, in general terms, students found this task positive and useful for improving their learning and their training in Physiology. However, it must be pointed out that attention of students was much more focussed on teacher’s questions rather than in questions made by the other students. This is an important concern because answering questions made by peers is a crucial step in the learning process. This therefore indicates that adaptation to the ECTS system is not yet complete. Thus, the new Physiology training program should focus specially on student learning and should also ask students for a more active role and for a direct personal involvement in cooperative activities. Moreover, it should particularly encourage discussion among students after presentations.