FLIPPED CLASS METHODOLOGY FOR TOXICOLOGY STUDENTS TO ACHIEVE STUDENTS LEARNING AUTONOMY

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requires a change of the learning modalities from lecture to new teaching methods and the use of new Learning and Knowledge Technologies (LKT) that can easily develop key aspects of the EHEA. One of the most important aspects that the EHEA encourages is student autonomy, that allows the Professor to become a guide for students, in order to facilitate the use of resources, and tools they need to explore and develop new knowledge and skills among which are the new information technologies. Therefore, the Professor’s involvement in the design and development of new content and distribution process is incredibly important in the new way of teaching that the EHEA has developed.

Students are expected to acquire abilities that will help them adapt in their future as professionals, so they will be able to self-manage their knowledge acquisition in order to overcome future challenges. The ability to manage their own knowledge acquisition can be learnt with diverse methodologies, that most times will include reinforce student’s work at home.

To achieve this, we propose the use of the “flipped class”, for toxicology students, in which theory is recorded by the professor and sent to the students that learn at their own pace; while in class, they will develop projects and practical activities. With the implementation of the “flipped class”, we intend to provide a personalized autonomous education that improves the attention and performance of toxicology students. We expect that this methodology will result in more autonomy of toxicology students that will help them in their professional career.