INNOVATIVE EDUCATIONAL PROJECT AND INTERDISCIPLINARY COORDINATION IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION AREA IN THE FIELD OF BIOMATERIALS

This work describes the Innovative Educational Project related to the subjects of “Fundamentals of Biomaterials” and “Materials Science and Engineering”, both of them in the degree on Materials Engineering. "Fundamentals of Biomaterials" is a subject of second year of the degree. It consists of two thematic blocks: 1) Materials of Biomedical Use and 2) Biological Response to Biomaterials: Biocompatibility, given by lecturers that are in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Biology and Geology, respectively.
The project is centred on two important aspects: i) to develop educational active methodologies adapted to the European Higher Education Area, which implied the active participation of the students in order to favour their autonomous learning and the development of the generic and specific skills associated with the field of Biomaterials and ii) the coordination between lecturers of different departments, who teach the subject of "Fundamentals of Biomaterials", for the production of new educational material.
Activities focused towards the autonomous learning of the student, applied to the subject of "Fundamentals of Biomaterials" are proposed. Taking into account that our mother language is Spanish, the aptitude to analyze scientific texts in the international language of scientific communication (English) is a fundamental skill that our university graduates have to develop. Therefore, the first two activities proposed in the project are related to the analysis of scientific articles, by means of which the students can also develop skills of, among others, how to work as a part of a team, capacity of synthesis of the acquired knowledge and the ability of transmitting it in written and orally. To develop these aspects, the student interest is encouraged rewarding with a basic book on Biomaterials to the five students who have obtained the best qualifications.
During the third activity, the students of the subject "Science and Engineering Materials” of the first year have to summarize in three slides different Biomaterials topics. Afterwards, the slides are corrected by the students of the second year of "Fundamentals of Biomaterials", doing a critical evaluation of them.
New procedures for the evaluation of acquired knowledge and developed skills are established. To evaluate the success of the three proposed activities in this project and to suggest improvements for future years, the opinion of the students is taken into account through voluntary and anonymous surveys. In order for the teachers to have information about the necessary working hours by the students for doing the activities, the students refill forms for controlling the time. It will allow in future academic courses, to fit the duration of the activities to the corresponding ECTS (credits) of the subject.
The last activity consists of the coordination of the lecturers from both departments to prepare a Study of Cases that contains the two thematic blocks of "Fundamentals of Biomaterials", to give continuity to the contents of the subject.
To complement the formal academic lectures, the students will visit a dental industry at the end of the term to allow them to see how biomaterials (e.g. dental screws) are fabricated. Also, the students attend to a conference of an expert in biomaterials, author of the paper that students have to read during the second activity. In this way, the students have a direct contact with a biocompatibility researcher.