EDUCATIONAL TOOLS IN INSTRUMENTAL ANALYSIS FOR SELF-DISCOVERY EXPERIMENTS AND TECHNIQUES FOCUSSED TO UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN PHARMACY

The renewed interest in pedagogical goals for many teachers at the Spanish universities is derived from the next implementation of European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) in the high level studies. This fact questions the traditional methodologies and this situation invites to explore and construct new strategies to facilitate the teaching-learning processes. The work of analytical chemists can be involved in solving problems related to criminals or doping control in the sport activities as representative and interesting examples for the students. These subjects are very illustrative and attractive for the students to visualize chemical experiments in the classroom.
In this study a survey of 15 students belonging to third year in the graduate studies in Pharmacy was selected. These students choose studies on applied instrumental analysis as selective subject. In such cases of small group of students a very good communication among teachers-students was obtained. Different simple experiments in the classroom to visualize and understand other complex chemical processes were satisfactorily developed. This kind of situations enhances the collaboration among teachers and students. Although the concepts of the subject to be studied are complex, the students are involved in regular meetings, discussions and informal conversations. These activities are focused to increase the participation of the students in the class and also to develop an active, reflective and critic behaviour with the aim to expand the learning out time and space of the classroom. These experiences show that the good communication teachers-students in reduced number of students contribute to success results beyond the use of new information and communication technologies (ICT).