Abstract:

Introduction
We designed a learning activity using a student congress as a teaching tool. The main objectives were to improve their ability for communicating scientific data in different situations and to highlight the job opportunities that the studies of Pharmacy offer.

Methods
The activity was entirely voluntary both for teachers and students. The students enrolled through the Students Association of the Faculty (AdR) and the Valencian Association of Students of Pharmacy (AVEF). We create a Committee formed by 26 undergraduates, 1 ERASMUS student, 2 postgraduate students and 6 teachers that tutored them. First of all they were organized in four commissions to develop the different tasks of the organization, i.e. scientific decisions, communication and advertisement, financial questions, and protocol. The slogan was agreed by the overall organizing committee and was “Professional possibilities, looking forward the future”. Two modalities of participation were proposed: attendance and active participation, both restricted to students. The latter was possible in two modalities: posters and oral communications of scientific results. The communication committee built a web to inform the students and the University of the activity. The scientific committee was responsible for the selection of posters and oral communications. It was also in charge of finding lecturers that were experts in different fields of Pharmacy: community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, industry, Health administration, geriatric health services, and research and teaching. Their participation was prepared as Round Tables and lectures. The financial committee looked for funds to cover all the expenses so that the activity was free for the participants, including refreshments and poster prints. The protocol committee organized the program and took care of the facilities. Evaluation of the activity was carried out by means of an anonymous survey among participants.

Results
A total of 253 students enrolled for the activity; 30% of them were pregraduated students adapted to the EEES, 44% pregraduated students belonging to the old Plan of Studies and 26% were postgraduated students (Master and Ph.D.) . 71 posters were presented and 17 oral communications were exposed. Pre-graduated student shared their experiences in different disciplines with new methodologies adapted to the EEES. Master and PhD students presented results concerning their research projects. A total of 70 survey responses were collected. They expressed an overall evaluation of 7.9 ± 0.6 (up to 10).

Conclusions
Most students feel attractive this activity as demonstrated by the high participation achieved, regardless the learning-teaching methodology to which the students are used to, as the percentage reflects the actual proportion of the students at the Faculty of Valencia following the different Plans of Studies. Even though the participation on the survey was reduced to 27%, the satisfaction expressed was encouraging.

Keywords:

Students' congress, pharmacy, round table, Valencia, poster, oral communication, AVEF.