EVALUATION AND ACTIVITY GROUP ON THE SUBJECT ORGANIC CHEMISTRY DEGREE IN SCIENCE AND FOOD TECHNOLOGY

The area of Organic Chemistry of the UBU (University of Burgos) has been working for several years on a series of new initiatives at the teaching level aimed to improve the results in this discipline and, especially in the learning of stereoisomerism and stereochemistry in the first courses of the Chemistry Degree. Our concern for continuous improvement leads us to look for new methodologies, paying special attention to the choice of activities, but also taking care about mechanisms for their evaluation. In this paper, we develop an activity oriented to be done by groups of students to learn stereoisomerism of organic compounds. We also present the way to evaluate this activity, which is a part of the practices corresponding to organic chemistry subject for the first year of the Degree on Science and Food Technology. The group activity is the development of a poster. The central topic of each poster is the characterization-study of stereoisomerism and the uses in everyday life of an organic molecule. An aspect of this activity that needs to be underlined is the ongoing evaluation, with the follow-up of: 1) Acquisition of knowledge, 2) Development of skills, and 3) Student satisfaction. This assessment allows us to get a more objective grading and, at the same time, adjustments for its improvement. In the final exhibition of the posters, all groups and teachers of the subject take part in the task of qualifying the result of each group. For qualifying, it has previously been provided a rubric. The main achievement observed after some years implementing this learning methodology is the increase of the number of students who pass the subject of Organic Chemistry. Furthermore, this activity is positively evaluated by the students.