Abstract:

According to Bologna Agreement, the Grade in Pharmacy has been implemented during the course 2010/2011 in the Faculty of Pharmacy (Complutense University). In the first semester of the second year our department teaches an obligatory subject: Analytical Chemistry II. This subject is very important for the future graduates in Pharmacy, especially if their career is oriented to Pharmaceutical or Food and Beverage Industries, Clinic or Environmental Analysis. Therefore, one of the main objectives sought by the University teachers is to know how to transmit the relevance and the huge utility of the Analytical Chemistry in Experimental and especially Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The work of analytical chemists involves the solving forensic or public health problems, or doping control in sports, or other analytical challenges. These examples are very representative, interesting, illustrative and attractive for the students to visualize chemical experiments in the classroom or in the laboratory and they contribute to enhance the role of the teachers in transmitting the relevance of Analytical Chemistry for solving real problems with high social impact such as the relationship between consumption of tobacco and lung cancer.
With the implementation of the tutorial activities, including voluntary homework, classroom discussions, team works, and tutorage practices in the laboratory, we have kept a high level of regular attendance during the course. We attribute this success to the fact that the students are motivated because they realize that the effort requested from them leads to an enhancement in their knowledge and results.
Several simple experiments named “tutorage practices” allowing the students to visualize and understand instrumental analysis were satisfactorily developed. One of these practices was the adaptation of Official Methods (IUPAC, EPA, AOAC, FDA, …) to solve analytical problems. Thus, as an example of them was the determination of total particulate matter and nicotine content in mainstream smoke from normal and light cigarettes adapting CORESTA (Cooperation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco) methods. This experiment makes the students to observe how the laboratory practice can be conveniently exploited to solve real problems according to official methods.

Keywords:

Bologna proccess, tutorage practices, auto-evaluation, offical methods of analysis.