GROUP DYNAMICS TO IMPROVE TEAMWORK AND COLLABORATIVE COMPETENCIES IN CHEMISTRY STUDENTS

The development of tools for improving teamwork and collaborative competencies has become very important in the teaching-learning process as well as becoming one of the generic competences of University degrees, particularly in the Chemistry area. Teamwork can help students to be more effective in solving problems in a successful way as well as taking less time for acquiring competencies for individual students. This study was focused on working with first-year students in the degree of Chemistry, by participating as members of a team to develop and present a research work on one specific subject in the Chemistry field. In this sense, team dynamics can be applied in a novel way to students with the aim of developing competences related to leadership, decision making, collaboration and communication, all of them oriented towards favouring their interaction within the team. These dynamics are highly valuable in this particular case to achieve the common goal of working on a specific subject and, at the long term to prepare them for their professional career. In this work, four different team dynamics were proposed, all of them aimed to the improvement of student's skills in teamwork. Furthermore, the degree of satisfaction of all students with these activities was evaluated through a survey. Most of the students participated actively in these dynamics, resulting in groups of highly motivated individuals with a clear vision of their objectives and tangible evidence of their achievements. In summary, it has been demonstrated that the dynamics of teamwork are an excellent tool to train undergraduate students in the acquisition of skills to improve their learning of Chemistry concepts as well as to integrate themselves successfully in work teams, managing and leading them in specific tasks.