Journal of Biochemistry Education

10

Authors: Bruna M.Araújo, Éverton de A.A. Barbosa, Sandra G. Gava, Zaira B. Hoffmam;,Tânus Henrique A. Pereira, Flávio A.Silva, Nayara G. Tessarollo, Andréa O.B.Ribon

This study describes the Tutoring Program in Biochemistry (TutBQI) at the Federal University of Viçosa, an extracurricular activity designed to complement the traditional lectures in the Fundamentals of Biochemistry course (BQI 100). Ten years after the TutBQI implementation, we reported its positive impacts on the student’s performance verified by the survey of the failure rates and average grades in BQI100. Limitations of the program are also presented.

15

Authors: Paulo Gilberto Simões d'Ávila, José Claudio Del Pino, Clovis Milton Duval Wannmacher

Students from 5 groups of the Postgraduate Program in Biological Sciences: Biochemistry followed a discipline of Teaching Methodology in Biochemistry, a reflexive and non-directive discipline, from the year 1999 to the year 2005. In the first day (pre-test) and in the fourth day (post-test) the students marked the 5 most important positive and negative characteristics of a teacher from a list containing 21 characteristics of each one. The differences from the marks between the pre and the post-test were similar in the 5 groups and higher than the marks of a control group that did not followed the discipline. About the positive characteristics of a teacher, competence and interest were the most marked characteristics in the pre and in the post-test, while coherence increased in the post-test. In relation to the negative characteristics of a teacher, authoritarian increased significantly in the post-test, decreasing the characteristics of incompetence, disinterest and incoherence. Considering that this subject was not a theme of the discipline, it is possible that the change in the perception of the students may be due, at least in part, to the reflexive character of the discipline.

35

Authors: Vanessa Jaqueline da Silva Vieira dos Santos1, Elaine Aparecida de Oliveira, Juan Carlos Vega Garzon, Eduardo Galembeck

Metabolic Pathways Visualization Skill Test: Development and Evaluation. External Representations (ERs) have been reported as important aids in Biochemistry learning process, and it is quite often having ERs to help better describe complex biochemical phenomena. When introduced to the biochemistry, students are also introduced to a whole new world of ERs, used to represent processes that happen at a molecular level. The construction of models is based in abstraction and logical reasoning, and difficulties in understanding such models seem hamper to understand biochemical contents. This article describes the development and implementation of a Metabolic Pathways Visualization Skill diagnoses test. The results obtained shows that the developed tool can be useful to help instructors to diagnosis their students’ visualization skills related to the metabolic pathways.