THE SIMULATORS IN THE TEACHING OF PHARMACOLOGY

Pharmacology is a subject in the curriculum of a chemical pharmacist biologist at the School of Chemistry of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Pharmacology is taught in two courses, Pharmacology I and Pharmacology II, both biannual. The Pharmacology program includes theoretical and practical aspects, there are 6 hours a week for teaching the contents of the program and it is studied in face-to-face mode. Recently, they presented us with a Pharmacology simulator to evaluate it and based on the opinions of the professors, incorporate it into the program, and this is what we share in this writing. Each session of the Simulator has title, objective, methodology, template for results, exercises, questions for discussion and bibliographical references. We think that technologically it is an interesting proposal to strengthen learning; however, face-to-face teaching provides many more elements, abilities, skills and competencies. The simulator contains experiments of which we have the face-to-face version, why would we repeat the activities. It would be more useful to have experiments that we do not have access to due to operating costs, for example: how a flow cytometer works, how we identify a specific compound in a gas chromatograph, etc., If we compare, the face-to-face version with our simulator proposal, we immediately notice that valuable skills and competences are lost in the virtual version, from coexistence with others, effective communication with colleagues, organized collaboration, impossibility to observe and understand events such as hypnosis, degrees of sedation, intermediate processes to the expected results, etc., all of the above are not learned in the simulator, because it only quantifies the final result, that is, quantifies whether or not it is present, a pharmacological effect. Such a simulator would be more oriented to the discussion and reading of articles and depends to a large extent on the creativity and planning of the session by the teacher. Although, technology is an indisputable ally in the teaching-learning process, teachers should ask and reflect carefully if it is appropriate to acquire proposals such as the simulator, as students will graduate as biologic pharmaceutical chemists, who will be the operators in laboratories clinical. In this intervention we present skills and competences that are currently learned in face-to-face sessions versus the digital proposal. We consider that it is a good option in those degrees that only know the theoretical foundations to complement some specific aspect, but that their real labor field does not contemplate it of its competence. We consider that there are technological proposals that do not exceed or provide additional learning and that would only accumulate as more work for the students of this degree. In conclusion, technology will incorporate the strictly pertinent so as not to overload the students' tasks.