Peer lectures can be a valid educational tool for medical students. The medical society at UCL organized 10 interactive peer lectures covering various clinical topics for over 100 students each. Students and peer teachers generally rated the lectures positively, noting advantages like personal experience and developing teaching skills. However, peer teachers may lack the in-depth knowledge of specialists and quality could vary. Overall, the study found peer-led lectures to be an effective supplementary learning method that provides benefits to both students and peer teachers.
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Peer lectures: A valid learning tool
1. uclumedicalsociety
Peer lectures:
a valid tool for learning?
Sindhu Naidu, Tanmay Kanitkar,
Vruti Dattani, Owain Donnelly,
Patrik Bächtiger, Elissa Rekhi
With thanks to Dr LJ Smith & Prof Jane Dacre
3. uclumedicalsociety
MedSoc: Education
• Student-run society
• Aim: organise high-standard education events
• Diverse range
– “Approaching the OSCE”
– “Teaching core clinical data interpretation”
– “What I wish I had known”
4. uclumedicalsociety
What do we know?
• Near-peer teaching is a valid form of
education1, 2
• Students can be as good as formal teachers in
small group teaching3- 5
• There is less evidence for peer-led lectures,
but what there is looks promising6
10. uclumedicalsociety
Conclusions
• Peer teaching is recognised as valid
• Our interactive lecture format was wellreceived by both students and peer teachers
• Potential for peer-led lectures to supplement
formal curriculum
12. uclumedicalsociety
References
1. GMC, 2013. Good Medical Practice.
2. Lockspeiser et al., 2008. Understanding the experience of
being taught by peers: the value of social and cognitive
congruence.
3. Tolsgaard et al., 2007. Student teachers can be as good as
associate professors in teaching clinical skills.
4. Büscher et al., 2013. Evaluation of the peer teaching
program at the University children´s hospital Essen – a single
center experience.
5. Cate & Durning, 2007. Peer teaching in medical education:
twelve reasons to move from theory to practice.
6. Gill et al., 2012. Utility of a student-organised revision day.
Editor's Notes
S + T introduce themselves.
In the next 10 minutes we’ll first explain to you what “Medsoc education” is to give you some context about what we did. We’ll then talk about the existing literature about peer lectures, talk to you about the peer lectures that we held and the results from the feedback, and then try to provide a conclusion about its place in medical education.Slides 1-2: 45 seconds
TanmayMedsoc Education is an entirely student-run society society in our university, UCL, and we aim to run high-standard education events for our peers to supplement the formal curriculum. Some of our events have included a mock OSCE to introduce the OSCE format to first and second year medical students, a workshop to help clinical students with data interpretation , and a lecture for clinical students to allay their anxiety about learning on the ward. We’ll be presenting posters on these events later today so please do come along. - IAMSE. 45 seconds(What we are)[from Vruti’s thing] (plug other posters)
SindhuThere has been a lot of research into peer-led medical education. We do know that near-peer teaching is a valid form of education. There has been a lot of research showing it is beneficial for both student and teacher. Several papers have also shown that students can be as good as formal teachers in small group teaching such as during teaching clinical skills. Student tutees feel that the experience they have is as good as when taught by formal tutors. Furthermore, educational outcomes such as exam results are comparable between student and formal teachers. There are some caveats to this. Firstly, the student teachers have to be trained and secondly, peer-led teaching is better if there are frameworks in which teaching is held rather than simply ad-hoc teaching to your peers. We have recognised the importance of both of these and this year we have successful requested teaching training courses for our student teachers with the help of our university. The focus of our society is also to introduce frameworks through which high-standard teaching can take place. However, there is less evidence for peer-led lectures but what there is looks promising. For example, one paper showed that mini-lectures for a large group of about 150 students were rated comparably with mock OSCEs when run as part of a revision day, showing that peer-led lectures can be successful. 2min (Existing lit on peer lectures)1.Near-peer teaching is good for the student, the teacher and the university For the student: Cognitive distance (Lockspeiser): we found this too! Students said peers are more approachable. They can understand the difficulty that students are facing better + explain it to them in terms that are more understandable. For the teacher: Doctors are meant to be teachers too (GMC),near-peer teaching is beneficial for the teacher (loads of lit on this), opportunity to share an area of interest 2. Students can be as good as formal teachers in other formats a. “Trained students can be as good as associate professors in teaching clinical skills “ (Tolsgaard)- This says students must be (a) trained and (b) they teach clinical skills Taught in small groups b. It is also not permissible to relieve senior lecturers from their tasks and replace them by cheaper peer-teachers. Clearly the peer-to-peer-teaching concept in a paediatric course could be confirmed quantitatively in a prospective, randomized study. The student tutor is able to mediate selected clinical teaching responsibilities and is therefore a useful addition based on its intermediate position in a hospitals’ hierarchy. A tutor does not replace a lecturer because he does not secure the interpretation in an entire context. Such study limitations have to be considered when peer-teaching programs are established. (Buscher 2013) Providing formal educational frameworks, faculty development (Cate) – we say this too!3. Less evidence for lecturesWe know lots about small-group teaching, teaching clinical skills, but less about large-group lectures. “Mini-lectures” scored comparably to other aspects of near-peer teaching (taught to a large group of around 150 students) (Gill)So we looked at our data to see how the students liked the peer lectures.
TanmayWhat we did is that we ran 10 interactive ‘peer lectures’ on core topics that we felt were either important or difficult and that were not as thoroughly covered as we would have liked in the formal curriculum. These were meant to be summary lectures to impart ways to learn information rather than introduce new information to the students. We invited the whole cohort of about 300 students to our lectures and we had a regular attendance of about 100 students for each lecture. We quality-assured our lectures and we will talk more about this shortly. 1minSCREENSHOTS!!!10 lectures that were…SUMMARY material, rather than teaching new material. Emphasise revision, overview, sharing methods of learning difficult concepts.
TanmayThe results from the student feedback were very positive. Students rated the content of the lecture, the standard of the lecturers and significantly, their ability to answer questions at least 4.5 out of 5 on our Likert scale. They also found that their knowledge of the topic increased on average from 2.85 to 3.9 on our Likert scale. 2minSummary of workStudents provided feedback at the end of each lecture, using a questionnaire which rated various criteria from lowest (1) to highest (5). Questions focused on whether peers could provide high-quality interactive case-based lectures comparable to standard medical curricula. Tutors completed similar questionnaires to assess any benefits gained. Free text responses were encouraged. Summary of resultsThe results from 633 students demonstrate that students found both the content of the lectures and the quality of the lecturers excellent (4.45; 4.52 respectively). They were also enthusiastic about future lectures (4.80). Feedback from 18 tutors reveals benefits including consolidating their existing knowledge (4.82) and developing teaching skills (4.71).N= 600 ish
TanmayThe results from the student feedback were very positive. Students rated the content of the lecture, the standard of the lecturers and significantly, their ability to answer questions at least 4.5 out of 5 on our Likert scale. They also found that their knowledge of the topic increased on average from 2.85 to 3.9 on our Likert scale. 2minSummary of workStudents provided feedback at the end of each lecture, using a questionnaire which rated various criteria from lowest (1) to highest (5). Questions focused on whether peers could provide high-quality interactive case-based lectures comparable to standard medical curricula. Tutors completed similar questionnaires to assess any benefits gained. Free text responses were encouraged. Summary of resultsThe results from 633 students demonstrate that students found both the content of the lectures and the quality of the lecturers excellent (4.45; 4.52 respectively). They were also enthusiastic about future lectures (4.80). Feedback from 18 tutors reveals benefits including consolidating their existing knowledge (4.82) and developing teaching skills (4.71).N= 600 ish
TanmaySimilarly, we asked the tutors for feedback and they found it to be a useful experience overall and rated various parameters at least 4.5 out of 5. They also thought it was useful for exams, for example it allowed them to consolidate their knowledge in a particular topic. The lectures were also useful in a long-term point of view; for example it enabled them to develop their teaching skills. They also found it to be useful for their career, either because they recognised that doctors need to teach, or because they have an interest in medical education.2minOverall: 4.5, Useful for exams: 4.65; Teaching skills: 4.7; Career: 4.47 Summary of workStudents provided feedback at the end of each lecture, using a questionnaire which rated various criteria from lowest (1) to highest (5). Questions focused on whether peers could provide high-quality interactive case-based lectures comparable to standard medical curricula. Tutors completed similar questionnaires to assess any benefits gained. Free text responses were encouraged. Summary of resultsThe results from 633 students demonstrate that students found both the content of the lectures and the quality of the lecturers excellent (4.45; 4.52 respectively). They were also enthusiastic about future lectures (4.80). Feedback from 18 tutors reveals benefits including consolidating their existing knowledge (4.82) and developing teaching skills (4.71).
SindhuThe feedback from our lectures was clearly very positive, but the question is do peer-led lectures have a valid place in medical education? There are some advantages to them.There is more social and cognitive congruence between the learner and teacher. Students are good at picking out which bits of a topic they struggled with, and have learned ways to understand such difficult areas and can pass this along to their peers. There are also more approachable, so learners may be less embarrassed to ask what they feel to be silly questions compared to learners run by consultants.They can also bring in their personal experience, by imparting useful tips such as mnemonic devices and frameworks of learning information to their peers. Share knowledge from different sites to imparting information that would have otherwise remained with only a few people.They can also draw on their personal experience of what they see as good teaching such as case-studies and exam-focused questions and this was highly praised by our students in their feedback too. It is also useful for the student teachers: doctors are expected to give talks to large groups of people and this is something that students may have little experience with, so this is one opportunity for them to develop such experience. However there are also some disadvantages of course.Students are definitely not as knowledgeable as specialists. This is linked to the worry that they may pass on wrong information, which is more dangerous in a large group as the wrong information will be more widely disseminated. One way we tried to ameliorate this is by asking a clinical teaching fellow in our university to vet the content of our lecture 3 weeks before each lecture. There may also be variability in teachers: we recruited tutors who were enthusiastic about teaching but enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily equate to ability. We tried to tackle this by getting the student tutors to run-through their entire lecture to a group of their peers first a week before. This allowed us to point out weaknesses in the way they delivered their lecture e.g. this bit wasn’t interactive enough, this bit wasn’t explained clearly. It is also important for us to mention that there may be backlash from staff who do not feel there is a role for peer-led education in the medical curricula. The way we tried to address this across all our events is by encouraging faculty buy-in. E.g. the dean of medical school is our society patron, we tried to incorporate the clinical teaching fellows and centre for medical education, and we emphasised that our events were meant to supplement and not supplant existing formal curriculum.2 minTeachers get a LOT for benefits Students think their peers are good teachers They can be “better” than usual undergraduate teachers in some ways Approachable (Social congruence) Know which parts of a topic are difficult to understand and have learnt ways to understand them and can pass this on to their peers (cognitive congruence) Intensively engage students by incorporating what they see as “good teaching” e.g. case studies, tips from personal experience about how to understand difficult topics Teaching skills are increasingly recognised as an important part of porfolio. Giving lectures is rare. They may not be “as good as” the usual teachers in other ways Not fully trained or have as much knowledge as a specialist - fear about “wrong information” (can be reduced by vetting it first) Variability in student teachers (enthusiasm does not equate to ability – in our scheme again students have to check their knowledge + present to others and get feedback) Backlash from formal teachers (can lessen this my encouraging faculty buy-in e.g. getting support from head honchos, getting them involved in vetting, supplement)From the abstractMedical students perceive peer tutors as fulfilling a high standard of teaching, which can supplement the undergraduate curriculum. Our feedback shows peers confer additional benefits: they are more approachable and intensively engage students by incorporating case studies and tips from personal experience. Since doctors are expected to teach not only small groups but also deliver presentations for large groups, the opportunity to develop these skills early is extremely valuable.
TanmayIn conclusion… 45 secWhere should we go from here?Keep teachingMore studies into the validity of this?
SindhuWhat we would like for you to take home today is that large-scale peer teaching is an effective tool with advantages to both learner and teacher. If you have any questions about incorporating such teaching in our universities we would be more than happy to answer any questions. Thank you. 15 sec
Cate & Durning, 2007. Peer teaching in medical education: twelve reasons to move from theory to practice. Medical teacher 29 (6): 591-9. Gill et al., 2012. Utility of a student-organised revision day.Clinical teacher 9(3): 183-7.GMC, 2013. Good Medical Practice.Lockspeiser et al., 2008. Understanding the experience of being taught by peers: the value of social and cognitive congruence. Advances in health sciences education 13: 361-372.Tolsgaard et al., 2007. Student teachers can be as good as associate professors in teaching clincial skills. Medical teacher 29 (6): 553-7.Büscher et al., 2013. Evaluation of the peer teaching program at the University children´s hospital Essen – a single center experience. GMS Z Med Ausbild 2013;30(2)