IMPLEMENTATION OF INQUIRY BASED LEARNING DURING THE FIRST TWO YEARS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY DEGREE

Introduction:
Biotechnology needs scientific and management skills to acquire the intellectual impact and economic performance required to revert into a benefit for society. It is necessary to bring our students essential tools to be competitive in their profession in the future. The implementation of this project challenges the students to look for a specific biotechnological idea that could have a solution for the society.

Methodology:
In this study, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) has been developed, so students can face innovation, integration of knowledge, the scientific method and the creation of a business idea from the first years at University. The objectives of the project are:
a) to promote the innovation capacity of students, to integrate several subjects from the first two years of Biotechnology degree into a common project,
b) to encourage research activities and
c) to generate an appropriate searching and exploration environment.

Students by themselves develop the project along these two years working through 6 different subjects (3 in the first year: Informatics, Chemistry and Business Management; and 3 in the second year: Microbiology, Biochemical Engineering and Statistics). Therefore, each subject sustains the contents of the chosen idea. In this way, the student is intellectually involved in the process of creating the project. At the end, the best 3 projects/ideas are awarded to participate in a program related with acceleration of ideas in collaboration with the Scientific Park of Madrid. The relevance of this IBL closing project comes from, firstly, the motivation of students to present quality works and, secondly, it gives them the opportunity to participate in a training program that is very close to their future professional carrier (being only in the 2nd year of the degree).

Results:
We highlight the good results obtained in the first edition of IBL. Preliminary data indicate that 72% of students would like to continue deepening with the chosen idea throughout their academic training. 60% of students rate as good/very good the capacity to integrate different contents in a single project. The general assessment of the IBL has been equal to or greater than 7 (scale of 1 to 10) for 66% of the students. In addition, teachers have perceived greater motivation of students in their subjects.

Conclusions:
For all these reasons, we can conclude that Inquiry Based Learning implies a qualitative improvement within our educational system. Further studies should be done to analyse in more detail students’ and teachers´ perceptions about IBL implementation. In addition, we will study the academic performance before and after the application of this methodology.