Abstract:

In the last year a collaborative interdisciplinary activity has been implemented in the University of Alicante. A forty eight students working group belonging to the first level of the chemistry degree has been selected. Globally speaking, the results have been highly successful. The main goals initially proposed to the students have been satisfactorily achieved.
However, the implementation of this activity has shown several significant problems such as students’ timetable organization; accomplishment of the roles initially assigned to each student in the frame of twelve small working groups; lack of understanding of the aims of a given work; problems with oral expositions; etc.
All these problems have led us to create a working group consisting of seven second level chemistry students who developed the interdisciplinary work last year and four professors. The objective of this group has been to try to solve the aforementioned problems and to modify the pedagogical and teaching methodology used. To this end, three components groups have been created. Each one of them has worked on the main characteristics of the interdisciplinary work: (i) organization of the students’ group working time; (ii) preparation of the written material; (iii) oral exposition.
The present paper will show the most relevant conclusions drawn from these studies. Further advices will be given to implement this kind of teaching activities in undergraduate studies.

Keywords:

interdisciplinary activity, collaborative learning, improvement, chemistry.