EXTRA-SYLLABUS SEMINARS: AN EXPERIENCE TO GAIN CROSS-SECTIONAL COMPETENCIES

Pharmacology is one of the basic subjects for students enrolled in Health and Biomedical Sciences which is generally recognized as a hard subject for amount of information a student has to comprehend and memorize. One of the limitations for teachers is the usually short time available to explain some contents of interest, making necessary to offer additional activities to cover some particular aspects of the pharmacology that cannot be explained during lessons due to time and syllabus limitations.
Here we present our experience with the Drugs and Society seminar held in our institution and addressed to undergraduate students. In this seminar we offer to our voluntarily enrolled students, to deep in some aspect of their own interest related with different fields of Pharmacology. During 8 to 10 sessions with 1 to 2 hours length each, we help students to search information using bibliographical and web resources in order to prepare a review work. The results of this work can be presented by them during a yearly student congress held in our university; this activity is recognized with credits to fulfill the academic requirements.
This seminar provides a forum for students to explore some aspects of their interest, which are not covered in the contents of general courses of Pharmacology offered to our undergraduates.
Students usually work alone or in small groups of 2 or 3 of them. During this teaching activity two phases can be distinguished. First, students under the guidance of the tutor focus their interest in a particular issue related with some field of Pharmacology. During this period the tutor guides to the students to search information from literature and bibliographical sources and help them to prepare the abstract for the student meeting. Second, tutor helps to students to prepare a short publication in a journal with the structure of Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion including the bibliography consulted. Finally, students defend their work as a poster or short oral communication in the meeting.
During this experience students have the opportunity to learn in a more cooperative and direct way, some knowledge about issues as for example: natural sources of drugs, rational use of drugs in animals, recreational drugs, elaboration of a veterinary formulary, pharmacovigilance process or the access to drugs in underdevelopment countries (some of themes covered during the last five years of this seminar).
This activity is highly valued and requested for students and represent an example of how to acquire cross-sectional competences while specific teaching targets in a particular subject (e.g. Pharmacology) are covered.