Introduction:

Medical students need to learn and acquire skills to calculate the concentration of chemical solutions in order to be able to use them properly during their professional life.

Objective:

To evaluate the efficacy of a learning resource designed using the context-based learning (CBL) approach to improve the skills required for solution concentration unit calculation among first-semester medical students of a public university.

Materials and methods:

Design-based research conducted in three phases: design, intervention, and evaluation. In the first phase, the Solutions with Empathy learning resource was developed. The intervention was carried out during the second semester of 2020 with first-semester students of the Medicine program offered by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and enrolled in the course Basic Chemistry for Health Sciences. An experimental study in which 66 volunteers took a knowledge questionnaire (pretest) and were randomly distributed into two groups was conducted. The experimental group (n=30) used the resource and then completed the post-test knowledge questionnaire, while the control group (n=36) did the opposite. Subsequently, 120 students took the regular course test. Bivariate analyses were performed to evaluate differences in test performance between the two groups and in the regular course test between resource users and non-users. Finally, to assess their perception on the resource, a questionnaire designed for this purpose was answered by 34 students, and the comments made by 116 professors/students during the forum of an academic outreach event were analyzed.

Results:

Statically significant differences were observed in the mean scores obtained in the post-test knowledge questionnaire in favor of the experimental group (p=0.003) and in the regular course test in favor of those who used the resource (p=0.041). The resource was positively rated by students and professors.

Conclusion:

The CBL approach of the learning resource evaluated here favored the learning of concentration unit calculation among the students who used it, increasing their motivation on the topic.

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