Abstract:

An emblematic aim of Higher Education Institutions today, is to provide a proactive learning environment, and to increase discussion rather than just memorization of concepts. To achieve this, educational innovations have focused on using interactive techniques, such as problem-based learning or team-based learning (TBL). We designed a pilot TBL workshop as a training activity for a large classroom in the module on Digestive Pathophysiology (DP) within Molecular Pathophysiology subject, coursed during the third year of the Pharmaceutical Degree. The objective was to increase both the attention and the participation of the students, as well as to build student’s teamwork skills.

A total of 52 students participated in the session and were divided into 3 work teams: “Speaker”, “Jury” and “Public”. The dynamics of the workshop focused on the exposition of a relevant topic in DP (Nausea and Vomit), that was chosen by the teacher.

The presentation and discussion about the topic was carried out by the Speaker group, composed of 5 students selected by the teacher. The rest of the students were organized (to avoid coalitions, in alphabetical order), in 6 groups that evaluated academic and formal aspects of the presentation. These six groups were either assigned to teams Jury (J1, J2, J3 and J4 with n=8students/group) or Public (P1 and P2 with n=7 students/group). The groups had the responsibility to score the Speaker group, using grading rubrics, and to always provide constructive arguments to improve the quality of the workshop.

The Jury groups, assessed items regarding to: presentation timing, clarification of ideas, providing enough relevant information, answering questions and knowledge about the topic. For their part, the Public groups assessed the following: relevance of the topic in pharmacology training and exposition aesthetics (colors used, font size, oral expression).

A student satisfaction survey (responses were anonymous) was conducted through the UCLM-Moodle platform and was collected during the two weeks right after the workshop.

It included 6 questions, which could be rated as:
(1) not at all,
(2) little,
(3) enough,
(4) quite or
(5) much.

The survey was filled out by 33 students. The results were exported to Excel and, for each question, we observed the following most common responses:
1) The workshop fostered teamwork (54.5% quite);
2) The proposed activity encouraged participation (48.5% much);
3) The atmosphere generated in the classroom during the development of the activity was nice (45.4% quite);
4) The activity helped you to learn about the subject addressed (63,6% quite);
5) The topic addressed is interesting for your training (42. 4% quite);
6) The time spent on the proposed activity has been adequate (42.4% quite).

We concluded that this pilot study has had a high positive acceptance and that aided students to clarify concepts. It also improved attention and made sessions more enjoyable. With the results obtained, we will improve this pilot experience for future academic courses and maybe, extent it to other subjects.

Keywords:

Workshop, Pathophysiology.