Edorta Santos-Vizcaino, Rosa Berraondo Juaristi, María Yolanda Fernández de Aránguiz Guridi, Águeda Fernández de Aránguiz Guridi, José Ángel Ruiz Ortega, Mirari Ayerbe Díaz, Begoña Lecea Arana, Edorta Martínez de Marigorta Izaga, Rosa María Hernández Martín, Manoli Igartua Olaechea, Aiala Salvador Martínez, Karmele Colom Aristondo
Final Degree Project (FDP) is an activity that students carry out at the end of their training process, being the opportune moment for them to demonstrate their professional qualification. However, during the last years, some important aspects to be improved have been detected in the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). By means of a statistical analysis (multivariate logistic regression) of the most important characteristics in FDPs, we found that most of FDPs contained knowledge of a single module of the curriculum, usually barely connected to any of the professional possibilities of the degree. Therefore, the present paper proposes an intervention to solve observed deficiencies and improve the execution dynamics of the FDP. The proposal includes a working methodology of a teaching group that is involved and participates in the proposal, elaboration, direction and evaluation of the FDP. Our teaching group is multidisciplinary, formed by specialists in different subjects of all the courses of the degree. The methodology used, by both the teaching group and the students, was Problem-Based Learning (PBL). We applied this methodology to different professional possibilities, such as the Community Pharmacy, the development of vaccines or the R&D. The proposed methodology for the carrying out of FDPs allows the integration of specific competencies from very different areas, which provides an enriching and unusual global perspective in the FDP. In addition, we designed methodologies and evaluation tools to work and quantify the achievement of some of the most relevant cross-curricular competencies (oral communication, written communication, and information search). This proposal, which is largely implementable in any Degree, strengthens the coordination of teaching groups, the originality and creativity of the FDP, the active role of students and teachers, and a direct relationship with professional opportunities. On the other hand, it favors the application of a PBL methodology among different areas of knowledge, unlike most published works on active methodologies, which are applied to individual subjects or groups of subjects of similar areas. This idea can be extrapolated not only to other degrees, but also to the creation of larger teams in a wider scenario such as the Campus and/or the University. To this end, our teaching innovation group conducts training courses at the University and shares video tutorials on-line accessible to those interested in learning the suggested methodology.
