Abstract

GONZALEZ GUEVARA, María Cristina; LOSADA CAMACHO, Martha  and  GARAVITO CARDENAS, Giovanny. Pharmacy student`s opinion about the implementation of computer based alternatives on experimental pharmacology learning-teaching process. rev.fac.med. [online]. 2008, vol.56, n.1, pp.43-53. ISSN 0120-0011.

Background. Nowadays the usage of lab animals in education is being eliminated all around the world. Other strategies are looked for to replace it because there is not any evidence that students trained using other alternatives are less qualified. Objective. The purpose of this research work was to contrast the opinion of the pharmacology students of Pharmacy, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, about the implementation of interactive software compared to the isolated tissue technique. Material and methods. This study compared teaching material which uses lab animals to another one based on an interactive software for the isolated tissue of rodent intestine by means of a survey applied to the seven semester students. Results. Student's opinion, in scale 1 to 5, is that there are advantages of the isolated tissue technique over the interactive software (p<0,05) with respect to information contribution (median 5:4 respectively), knowledge integration (median 5:4) and unexpected results interpretation (median 4:3). In relation to obtained information clarity, student's opinion shows that there aren't differences between the two alternatives (median 4). The use of laboratory animal implies an ethical cost (67%) that doesn't exist with the use of interactive software (27%). Finally, is high the acceptance of interactive software as an effective tool in pharmacology learning (77%) and is noticeable the student's interest about this alternative being used in other courses (79%). Conclusion. Even though some components of the practice can be lost using the interactive software; real assembly knowledge, confrontation to the difficulties of experimentation with alive beings and approximation to life dynamic process. The students think that there are not relevant differences between this two teaching materials.

Keywords : teaching; pharmacology; teaching materials; multimedia; software; animal testing alternatives.

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