ACCESS AND USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY BY ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY STUDENTS OF PHARMACY DEGREE

Several authors have addressed the need to adapt teaching and learning processes at the European Higher Education Area through the use of new teaching methods, including the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which play a prominent role as a teaching resource. According with this idea, some authors have pointed out the need of implementing ICTs in teaching. However, it is also important to consider the possibility of access to and the use of these ICTs by university students. Thus, the teacher would improve the learning situations, making them closer, adapted and motivating for students, identifying the different profiles and controlling the use of certain technological resources by students. Having in mind this situation, the aim of the present work was to evaluate the use of ICTs in a group of students of the subject “Analytical Chemistry II” (ACII), coursed in the second year of Pharmacy Degree, in order to know their relationship with ICTs access and improve the planning of the teaching of this course. In order to achieve this objective students completed a questionnaire about the access and use of different ICTs at the beginning of the course. 126 students (2 groups of theory of ACII) filled the questionnaire. It was found that 100% of students had a mobile phone (Smartphone 73%), although 8.7% expressed not to have Internet access in the classroom with the phone. In addition, 44.4% of the students used an electronic device different to mobile phone (PC or tablet) in class. Only 53.8% of them had access to Internet in the classroom with the electronic device used. 3.2% of students claimed not to know any program for making presentations on the computer and “powerpoint” was the most known program among students (41.3%). Finally, 55.6% of students had never used interactive response control in the classroom. The obtained results highlight the fact that although ICTs must be implanted in teaching, there is still a high percentage of students who are not familiar with the use of these technologies within the classroom. For this reason, teachers have to motivate students to encourage their use.