Abstract:

The present work has been developed by the members of INDONUTyB. This is a new network created at the University of Alicante and devoted to the research, development and application of new teaching methodologies to Human Nutrition, Food Chemistry and other closely related subjects.
At the present the members of this network are involved in teaching duties in different Degrees such as Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Tourism, Early Childhood Education and Sport Sciences. Usually the subjects to which are assigned have a relatively high number of credits of practical type. At the moment this practical work is carried out by performing some experiments at the lab of the Department. The diversity of students with very different lab skills and background knowledge (about nutrition and food chemistry), the idiosyncrasy of particular teacher (mainly its part time dedication to teaching at the University) and the heavy load of work (practical) at the end of the semester are factors than profoundly modulate the results obtained by the students in this practical part of the subjects.
In order to improve these results, a deep evaluation of the present lab-work was proposed. For the first semester of this academic year the work was focused in the Toxicology subject. This evaluation was carried out by means of a questionnaire supplied to the students via the web of the University (Campus Virtual). Results of this questionnaire were confirmed by a personal interview of a reduced group of students randomly selected. The results obtained will be presented and discussed in the presentation; in addition the main conclusions will be integrated for the edition of the teachers’ guidebook that will be used in the forthcoming academic year (i.e 2009-2010).