Abstract:

In the last two decades, the search of suitable interactive tools to improve the learning procedures at the different levels of education has been one of the main objectives of the innovation in such field. These kinds of strategies provide the students an alternative and more noteworthy approach to the topic, favouring their implication and interest on it. Additionally, teachers have these resources available to enhance the quality of the classes and become them in a hands-on practice developing student skills and competencies needed to play a professional role.

The study of the most relevant trends in the field is an important issue that should be carried out at the university in order to establish solid basis in which graduates can support their subsequent career, not only in the research area but also in the industry or other domains of the labour market. Regarding Chemistry Degree, many of the subjects are commonly focused on the study of the principles of the issue forgetting to show the students the more remarkable innovations that are being currently performed by professionals.

Particularly, in the field of Analytical Chemistry, the study of novel extraction procedures based on environmentally friendly principles, which provide high extraction efficiency and selectivity, simplicity, and cost reduction is an aspect of considerably relevance for future graduates and the suitable performance of their occupational activity. In this sense, solid phase extraction (SPE) as well as QuEChERS method have been two of the most widely applied procedures in this field that should be thoroughly study, especially during the last year of the degree, with the aim of offering the students the possibility of developing real situations that should afford in their near future as a chemist.

In this work, an interactive pedagogical approach has been proposed to introduce students of the Degree in Chemistry into the field of novel and extensively applied extraction techniques. For this purpose, different multimedia videos, in which the main theoretical aspects of the SPE and QuEChERS method as well as their performance are described, were designed and used as educational tools in an experimental subject of the last year of the degree. The visualisation of the videos before the practice classes shown an important effect of the understanding of procedures improving considerably the skills of the students at the laboratory and increasing the effectivity of these sessions.

Keywords:

Audiovisual tools, analytical techniques, Chemistry.