Abstract:

Introduction:
Erasmus+ is the EU's programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. The University of Valencia participates in the Erasmus Program since its inception, with the promotion of exchange, cooperation and mobility. The new Erasmus + program contemplates, as the previous Lifelong Learning Program did, a specific action for the mobility of teaching and research staff of higher education institutions. the aim of this study was to assess and compare (i) the expectations with the topic of the seminar, (ii) the learning capacity, and (iii) the satisfaction of undergraduate, master and PhD students from University of Padua with students from the University of Valencia.

Methods:
Undergraduate students of Pharmacy and Herbal medicine degrees, Master students in Drug development Master and PhD students in Pharmacy from the University of Padua participated in the survey. A total number of 138 students filled in the survey. The seminar was focused on how pharmacometrics can improve the drug discovery and development of new medicines. The topic was not included in the Study Plan, so the concepts were unknown for all students. Pharmacometrics uses mathematical models based on pharmacology, physiology and disease for quantitative analysis of interactions between drugs and patients. This involves Systems pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and disease progression with a focus on populations and variability. Two different surveys were performed, containing 6 questions each one: at the beginning of the hands-on session, a survey covering the expectations of the students was performed; and, once the seminar finished, the satisfaction and theoretical questions were included.

Results:
Three different aspects were obtained. When assessing the initial expectations, graduate students indicated a low degree of expectation, whereas master and PhD students indicated a moderate and high expectation, respectively. On the other hand, the learning capacity adapted to graduate, master and PhD students showed a similar behaviour among the different groups with a mean value of 72/100, 78/100, 75/100 for each sub-group of students, respectively. In regards of the satisfaction once the seminar was concluded, graduate students provided the highest index (5/5), whereas master and PhD students reported a mean satisfaction of 4 points over 5. The results suggest that expectations and satisfaction of students show a linear relationship when there is at least, a partial knowledge on the topic. On the contrary, when students are not able to anticipate the concepts of the seminar, their expectation decreases (graduate students). Nevertheless, their learning capacity is closely related to the satisfaction, making enthusiastic students and more capable to understand the concepts of the seminar.

Conclusion:
These results confirm that the workshop provides a valuable reflect of how the Erasmus+ program allows the exchange of concepts and relationships between students and lectures from different countries and enrich their perspectives of their professional career.

Keywords:

Erasmus+, Pharmacy, satisfaction, learning ability.