Collaborative Construction of Glossaries in the Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment of the Latin American School of Medicine

Abstract

Introduction: The creation of glossaries is one of the potential collaborative activities carried out within Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) supported on the Moodle platform.  They are digital educational resources that constitute spaces for the production and dialogue between participants and contents, allowing the incorporation of files and images and facilitating a better understanding of the content by the end reader.
Objective: To describe the experiences of collaborative construction of glossaries within the Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment at the Latin American School of Medicine.
Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in the period September-November 2025.  A survey was applied to a sample of 40 first-year medical students aged 18 - 25 years who received the own course of Teaching and Research Skills (TRS), using the university's virtual classroom as a support to the teaching-learning process.
Results: The results show a moderate level of complexity in the creation of glossaries, confirming that these are very useful digital educational resources for supporting the teaching process of subjects that promote this activity from a virtual environment, thus fostering collaborative work and the development of digital skills among students, favoring medical students’ acquisition of the appropriate vocabulary. 
Keywords: digital educational resources; virtual teaching and learning environments; glossary.