Abstract:

The implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) aimed to change the teaching style from a one-direction communication system in which the Professors grant their knowledge of the subject to the students that must acquire it, mostly through memorizing, to a system in which the student is the central piece of the learning process that acquires the knowledge by experiencing it in an autonomous way, mostly through the use of new learning and knowledge technologies (LKT) and diverse teaching methodologies.

In this sense, we proposed the development by the students of a toxicogenomic database through the use of literature data and data obtained in the laboratory practical classes, which would lead to a collaborative practical work that would improve long-time learning of the concepts studied in both theory and practical lessons.

After the implementation of the methodology previously described, we evaluated both academic performance of groups in which the toxicogenomic database had been developed with those in which said activity had not been performed. We also evaluated the results of polls passed to the students of both groups. We observed that students that had developed the toxicogenomic database believed that they understood better more complex theory concepts studied in class and that they would remember said concepts in the future. We also observed a significant difference in academic performance in the testing group compared to the control group, as marks were not only higher but higher marks where more common in the testing group. Moreover, students in the control group tend to state that they believed that performing more practical activities would have helped them understand more the subject; these students also believed that they would not remember as easily the concepts studied in class as they peers.

The results of our pilot study indicate that implementing more practical activities would be beneficial for students, both in making them more independent, as the flipped methodology implies that students need to work on the material beforehand, and in making it so that the knowledge would be retained longer, as well as to improve academic performance.

Keywords:

EHEA, flipped learning, toxicology, academic performance.