THE ‘MEETINGS CLUB’: AN EXPERIENCE IN THE ACQUISITION OF CROSS-SECTIONAL COMPETENCES

Amongst the changes derived to the implementation of Higher Education Area is to develop a teaching-learning system based in the acquisition of different types of competences by our graduates to face professional tasks with warranties.
One of the most common activities in many fields of knowledge and, particularly in the biomedical sciences, is to disseminate research and clinical results through the participation in different modalities of meetings. However, our students and professionals usually learnt the necessary skills for this activity in an experience-based way with unequal results.
Here, we present a formative action that is being developed in our department to improve the skill and competences of the veterinary pregraduate and postgraduate students related to professional meetings.
This formative action is organized from two points of view either related with a participant’s or with an organizer`s role. Thus, the contents of this activity are divided in several topics with the aim that the student acquires a general view about the mechanics and how to participate in professional meetings and how to carry out different roles.
The main topics (and formative targets) are:
•The Scientific Meetings modalities
- Types of activities and their characteristics (meetings, conferences, workshops, symposia,…)
•How to participate in a scientific meeting
- As participant: author guidelines (choosing a meeting, abstract submission, formats, etc), presentation modalities (poster, oral, virtual), acceptance mechanisms, registration process, communicating with the organizers, important date’s agenda, asking for information.
- As organizer: main issues in the organization and management of a meeting, different roles in a meeting (scientific and organizing committees, chairman/moderator tasks, social events), how to introduce a talk.
•In the meeting: what to do now?
- Oral presentation vs poster presentation
- Questions and answers
- Social attitude in a professional meeting
Since their beginnings this a well accepted and successful experience with a high degree of participation. Our experience from last years with pregraduate students and their participation in the Pregraduate Meeting in Biomedical Sciences in our institution will be presented.