Abstract:

Chemical Analysis is a core subject taught in the second year of Food Science and Technology Degree along the first four-month period in the University of Valencia. In the curriculum, it involves 6 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) credits. The aim of the course is, essentially, student training to perform either instrumental and classical analysis, as well as the establishment of the necessary basis to understand the fundamentals of each step of the analytical procedure, in order to be able to apply it correctly.

The development of the course is structured around the following axes: theoretical classes, laboratory, tutorial and seminar sessions. The final course grade is calculated from the obtained marks of theory, laboratory and seminars. Only 10% of the overall course grade comes from seminars, since they are conceived as a complementary approach, which covers topics not included in the official program but related to the subject contents.

One of the objectives of seminars is to encourage active participation of students in class. For this reason, the preparation of a seminar session involves different activities: creation of working groups, selection of a topic (carried out by the students with the aid of the teacher), bibliographic search, elaboration of a written report (5000-8000 words), and preparation of an oral presentation to be held in the seminar session to an audience composed by the rest of the students enrolled in the subject. Each student has a exposition time of 5–7 minutes. It should be remembered that this activity is essentially a team work that also involves other tasks not appreciated during the oral presentation, such as get to know each other, group meetings, keep notes, etc. The final work is assessed by the teacher and the audience.

This study gathers the results obtained from the application of the seminar activity along four consecutive academic years. The results are analyzed in terms of seminar marks, final grades, motivation, and satisfaction degree, among others.

Keywords:

Chemical Analysis, Seminars, ECTS.