THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON EDUCATIONAL SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES

Scientific divulgation is an important way of keeping society up to date on scientific issues to promote interactions between society and science that are not common in other situations. Is intended to arouse curiosity in order to understand the nature of everyday processes from a scientific point of view. In the last years the universities are promoting educational activities in order to get science to the society. The Faculty of Sciences of the University of Granada has developed different proposals both involving in an international and national frame, such as “La Noche de los Investigadores”, “Semana de la Ciencia”, “Aula Científica Permanente”, “Café con Ciencia”, “Ciencia y Sociedad”, etc. These activities are proposed and guided by University professors from different research areas. In these activities, the possibility of voluntary participation is offered to undergraduate and postgraduate university students.

Interested students have to be formed by professors before developing these activities being this training complementary to their specific academic schedule. Student implication would be an effective tool to get scientific and communicative skills as well as other abilities. Among them could be highlighted the design of short scientific protocols to learn how to organize laboratory tasks in a set time. Also, the students would get the ability to synthesize main ideas to communicate essential scientific concepts in an accessible language for non-experts. Furthermore, the public speaking would be improved, fact that nowadays should be upgraded in the University students for their formation for improving social skills. In addition, students would acquire other abilities such the capacity to face doubts raised regarding to a scientific aspects, enhance their self-confidence, promote student-professor relations, take the teacher's role, enhance their curriculum vitae for the future, etc. These activities would enable the student to improve their formation for their professional future.