First-year students often feel discouraged, especially with courses that require complex thinking and involve
establishing relations between different subjects such as biochemistry. It has been proposed that student-centred
pedagogy can achieve motivation and improve learning. In this context, this case study reports the use of art as a
strategy to engage students in studying and learning biochemistry. Three Art & Biochemistry sessions were
included in the programme of the Biochemistry course of first-year veterinary medicine students as one of the
graded activities. Working as a team, students expressed a biochemical concept or process of their choice through
any art representation to their classmates and to a panel of professors, both of which evaluated their performance
using a global perspective rubric. The students’ assessment of the activity over three consecutive years suggests
that the Art & Biochemistry sessions were successful as an approach to motivate them, and were also perceived
as helpful to the understanding and learning of biochemistry. This report supports a positive relationship between
art and science in enhancing self-learning and could be easily applied to other subjects and disciplines.

• Motivating active learning of biochemistry through artistic representation of scientific concepts

Share :