Nature of Sicence in classroom activities.

KARINA ALLEVA; ANDRES BARRADO; JOSE BOCCIO

San Francisco

Congreso; 54th Annual Meeting Biophysical Society; 2010

Biophysical Society

Understanding how science and technology works is one of the objectives of any course dictated in a school of science. Moreover, it is well established that scientific and technologic alphabetization is essential nowadays. In this work we present the activities designed to incorporate in the curriculum of a course of Physics for biochemistry and pharmacy students some perspectives in science and technology helpful to acquire a more realistic view of the nature of science. The Physic dictated as a basic course of biological careers must be useful and interesting for students that do not choose physics as their main studies. So, it must fulfill a double purpose: provide the biophysics tools needed for the understanding of the phenomenon underlying the biochemistry, but also allow students to appreciate the nature of science and scientific knowledge. The content of the course has been organized in modules. These modules have a coherent relationship with both the course topics as the nature of science to be communicated. The last module is complex projects developed by the students with the guidance of teachers. Students choose a problem concerning any of the topics of the course, they state their own working hypothesis and establish the proper experimental design. Then, they also make the experiment, analyze the obtained results and write a paper. This last module is performed by groups of students which at the end of the process present their results to in a meeting-like classroom activity. Our experience shows that this kind of activities not only contributes to the scientific alphabetization of students but also makes easy the learning of biophysics concepts since students are more motivated if they can carry on their own projects.