New Teaching Strategies in Medicinal Chemistry: Development of Educational Videos

MARTIREN, NADIA L; CAMACHO, CRISTIAN; CARLUCCI, RENZO; DELPICCOLO, CARINA M. L.; LA VENIA, AGUSTINA; MARTINEZ-AMEZAGA, MAITENA; MEDRAN, NOELIA S.; MENDEZ, LUCIANA; PIZZIO, MARIANELA G.

Congreso; 7ma Reunión Internacional de Ciencias Farmacéuticas (RICiFa 2023); 2023

The implementation of technological tools increases the motivation of current students, aiding theteaching-learning process.1,2 In this regard, educational videos have become an importanteducational didactic tool at university levels, serving as a facilitator for content delivery in manyflipped, face-to-face and online classes.3,4Due to the COVID outbreak in 2020 in Argentina, we experienced long isolation periods thattriggered a sudden and stressful change for both teachers and students. However, this experiencealso provided us the opportunity to ponder our teaching practices and design new strategies.In Medicinal Chemistry, as in many other courses in the Pharmacy program of the Facultad deCiencias Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas-UNR, we faced the difficulty of being unable to carry outexperimental activities, which are considered essential for the adequate training of futureprofessionals. This led us to create videos demonstrating how laboratory practical work should beconducted. The objective of producing this audiovisual content and integrating it into the virtualclassroom was to provide students with the opportunity to virtually engage with the experimentallaboratory. Furthermore, this allows students to pause the video to ask questions, interrupt it forclarifications on concepts or segments as many times as needed, and rewind and replay specificparts of the presentation.In the production of this audiovisual material, the staff of the department recreated each practice,with exhaustive descriptions of the glassware used, reagents, equipment assembly, manual skillsinvolved in various experimental techniques and explanations of expected results. The audiovisualmaterial was edited with ClipChamp Program. These videos were available to students on theinstitutional Moodle platform and the department's YouTube channel, easily accessible from anysmartphone or computer.5It is worth noting that the production of such a didactic tool has been of great value for ourdepartment, not only during virtual classes in the pandemic but also in the years that followed.Today, these videos are still used as supplementary learning materials for students, providing thema more complete preparation prior to their experimental activities, and, therefore, enabling themto perform practical assignments during the course in a safer and more efficient way.