Los alumnos ponen el examenuna oportunidad para aprender a aprender

Resumo

Introduction: The evaluation of Universitary students is a very active field of controversy. The aim of our work was to elucidate to what extent the students can be involved in their own evaluation in order to improve their motivation and performance. Materials and methods: Since the 2007-08 academic years we invited the students of our group of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics of the Pharmacy degree at the University of Santiago de Compostela, to prepare questions for the Biopharmaceutics exam. Each student was encouraged to elaborate one question by her/himself or with the help of other student. The students voted 10 questions among the total ones proposed and the professor guaranteed that 2 out of those 10 questions would be included in the exam, which had 5 questions in total. Results and discussion: During 2007-08 and 2008-09 more than 75% students collaborate in the preparation of the questions. We received around 40 questions, which were coincident in nearly 25%. Thus, once the repeated questions and those badly formulated were removed, the students could vote 10 out of more than 20. The search for an appealing question made the students to be more motivated and helped them to progressively learn the contents of the subject; the students having a more active behavior at the lessons. In 2007-08, 100% students of our group pass the exams in June or September. This caused a shift in the qualifications of all students of the Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics subject (140 students pass the exam and 19 failed). In 2008-09 the number of students that pass the subject was somehow lower (111 vs. 36 who failed), but the increase in the �notable�, �sobresaliente� and �matricula de honor� scores (the highest qualifications) was kept.