Abstract:

The Pharmacology subject is considered by students as one of the hardest matters in the Veterinary curriculum. It contains sections that must be studied mainly by heart and other ones that need to apply comprehensive and significant learning techniques and require a previous and overall knowledge of chemistry, physiology and pathology. It would be very appreciated by students if new study methods were integrated in the syllabus to improve the significative learning in this matter, to help them in the test applications and to get better test scores. The present work shows a conceptual map experience carried out in the Veterinary Faculty at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, with the contribution of students enrolled in the Pharmacology and Therapeutics subject, which is a third-year course. A small group of students (n=11) was voluntarily enrolled in a workshop for conceptual map based learning. The students’ activities were to learn the theory and how to construct concept maps and thus, become involved in the development of different maps corresponding to the different sections of the Pharmacology syllabus. These maps were discussed in collaborative sessions that were guided and supervised by tutors. Finally, students constructed an integrated pharmacological conceptual map with the complete subject contents. The teachers’ task consists of demonstrating students how to construct and use concept maps for this subject study and how to evaluate the actual use of this experience for students’ learning. In this way, during the experience, students solved two tests for each section: one was carried out before and the other was subsequent to the map creation and workshop session. Moreover, the test marks of the students enrolled in the conceptual maps experience were compared to those obtained from the students enrolled in a classic learning system. The results from mark comparisons and from opinion tests taken by professors and students will be discussed.

Keywords:

Concept map, Pharmacology, significative learning.