Physiology and Pathophysiology contents are distributed in three subjects in the Pharmacy Degree at the Universitat de Barcelona. The different organic systems included in the third subject are respiratory, urinary, endocrine and reproductive systems, as well as thermoregulation. Following the objectives of a teaching initiative funded by the Universitat de Barcelona and named “Physioactive: active and collaborative learning in Physiology and Pathophysiology” (DIGAPREN 2023DIG-UB/007), a practical session on biological rhythms has been designed. This session has been applied in 2024-2025 academic year in the Hybrid Active Learning Classroom (HALC), where groups of 10-12 students can work collaboratively and develop several active learning competencies. On the day of the final exam, the students completed a survey designed to measure their satisfaction with this new practical session.

The beginning of the session was based on an ad hoc video that introduces the existence and characteristics of biological rhythms. The group of 10-12 students visualized this video with the teacher and, thereafter, answered several questions about this topic. Subsequently, students were distributed into groups of 2-4 members, and each group studied a specific biological rhythm using a dossier that includes questions to solve with the adequate bibliography. The biological rhythms studied included body temperature, and the secretion of hormones such as aldosterone, cortisol, and luteotropin. Each group of students worked on its assigned topic during 90 min and prepared an oral presentation, which they shared with the rest of the groups. Sessions concluded with a collective activity gathering all groups, fostering discussion and allowing the teacher to assess the knowledge acquired during the session.

The analysis of the survey results showed that the development of this new practical session was highly appreciated by the students, with 78.4 % of them rating it positively. Moreover, they also appreciated positively the introduction of the HALC to this practical session, as 75 % of the students rated this new space adequate to develop it. Regarding the ad hoc video, it was well received, with 81.7 % of the students evaluating it favorably. On the other hand, the oral presentation was only viewed as a positive experience by the 50.8 % of the students. It has to be taken into consideration that, in the degree of Pharmacy, students have few opportunities to give oral presentations to their peers and are not used to this type of activity. In fact, when the students were asked to rate from 1 (the best) to 4 (the worst) the different practical sessions, only the 11 % of them rated the biological rhythms session as the best. Of note, the other sessions are laboratory sessions about spirometry or tissue recognition by microscopy, which did not involve the effort of extracting information from books or scientific articles or preparing an oral presentation to explain your newly acquired knowledge to your peers. Despite this, professors believe that developing these skills is very beneficial for students’ professional future and the results obtained in the evaluation show that the learning strategy has been positive.

Keywords: Teaching methodologies, practical sessions, survey, collaborative learning.