Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants in the Serra de Mariola Natural Park, South-eastern Spain

The present study aims to inventory and analyse the ethnobotanical knowledge about medicinal plants in the Serra de Mariola Natural Park. In respect to traditional uses, 93 species reported by local informants were therapeutic, 27 food, 4 natural dyes and 13 handcrafts. We developed a methodology that allowed the location of individuals or vegetation communities with a specific popular use. We prepared a geographic information system (GIS) that included gender, family, scientific nomenclature and common names in Spanish and Catalan for each species. We also made a classification of 39 medicinal uses from ATC (Anatomical, Therapeutic, Chemical classification system). Labiatae (n=19), Compositae (n=9) and Leguminosae (n=6) were the families most represented among the plants used to different purposes in humans. Species with the most elevated cultural importance index (CI) values were Thymus vulgaris (CI=1.431), Rosmarinus officinalis (CI=1.415), Eryngium campestre (CI=1.325), Verbascum sinuatum (CI=1.106) and Sideritis angustifolia (CI=1.041). Thus, the collected plants with more therapeutic uses were: Lippia triphylla (12), Thymus vulgaris and Allium roseum (9) and Erygium campestre (8). The most repeated ATC uses were: G04 (urological use), D03 (treatment of wounds and ulcers) and R02 (throat diseases). These results were in a geographic map where each point represented an individual of any species. A database was created with the corresponding therapeutic uses. This application is useful for the identification of individuals and the selection of species for specific medicinal properties. In the end, knowledge of these useful plants may be interesting to revive the local economy and in some cases promote their cultivation.

Innovation in the teaching of sustainable development in Europe: the case of ISLE Erasmus Network

Sustainable Development (SD) is one of the most widely used terms during the last years. It is a multidisciplinary concept, which applies mostly to life sciences but is not limited to them. Even though the short survey conducted by the authors revealed that there are only a few cases of Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) around Europe that provide programs dedicated to SD, it is obvious that there is a constant raise in the need for implementing courses related to SD in existing programs. This paper discusses the case study of I.S.L.E., an Erasmus Academic Network, which aims to use the existing knowledge and tools in the context of teaching sustainable development topics in Universities and HEIs around Europe as a basis, and elaborate further by introducing an innovative approach towards the improvement of teaching SD in HEIs, based on the current needs as they are identified by the actions of the Network.

Exploring the use of cooperative activities in a language subject to develop students’ social competences at the University

Cooperative learning has been successfully implemented in the last 60 years for teaching at different educational levels including the Higher Studies due to its solid theoretical foundation, the principles it proposes and its practical applications. The purpose of this article is to offer a proposal for some cooperative activities that allow students to work in small groups in a language subject in order to learn not only contents but also putting into practice what they learn, i.e., they learn by being active. This article discusses how the said activities make it possible for students to work with the main principles of cooperative learning, i.e.: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small-group skills and group processing. Moreover, this research will also point out that the proposed activities allow students to acquire some of the social competences required in the labour market such as leadership, conflict solving and cooperation.