Abstract:

The integration process in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) entails significant modifications in the organisation of university studies and teaching methods. A basic objective of the University is the formation of students that could build their own knowledge with the supporting and collaboration of the teacher and their partners. The development of the EHEA involves a remodelling of tasks carried out by the teacher, particularly those related to the planning of the subject by means of instruments that could guide and make easier the students work. In this sense a guide of autonomous work for students (guía de trabajo autónomo) consists in the proposal of a sequence of traced activities that would lead to the student learning.

This study proposes the incorporation of autonomous work activities by applying knowledge resources based on plastic arts such as painting, drawing and sculpture, as a new method of teaching in the area of Zoology. Therefore, the students are required to create an image database consisting of work of arts based on the representation of life which describe and summarize the morphology of a representative selection of species. Artistic images are often more useful than photographs in the morphological description of organisms and tissues, since they are prototypes which select key visual characteristics of the animals, while photographs show accidental characteristics that may interfere with the correct identification of them. Using the proposed autonomous work guide it is expected to qualify the student for the identification of the main distinctive anatomical and functional characteristics of the species studied.

Keywords:

Experimental Sciences, Zoology, arts, autonomous work.