Near-Peer Teaching and Exam Results: The Acceptability, Impact, and Assessment Outcomes of a Novel Biological Sciences Revision Programme Taught by Senior Medical Students
Background. Near-peer teaching is becoming increasingly popular as a learning methodology. We report the development of a novel near-peer biological sciences revision course and its acceptability and impact on student confidence and exam performance. Methods. A cross-sectional analysis of tutee-completed evaluation forms before and after each session was performed, providing demographic details, quality scores, and self-rating of confidence in the topic taught on a 0 to 100？mm visual analogue scale (VAS). The confidence data was examined using analysis of means. Exam performance was examined by analysis of variance and canonical correlation analysis. Results. Thirty-eight sessions were delivered to an average of 69.9 (±27.1) years 1 and 2 medical students per session generating 2656 adequately completed forms. There was a mean VAS gain of 19.1 (5.3 to 27.3) in self-reported confidence. Looking at relationship between attendance and exam scores, only two topics showed significant association between number of sessions attended and exam performance, fewer than hypothesised. Conclusion. The present study demonstrates that near-peer teaching for biological sciences is feasible and is associated with improved self-reported confidence in the sessions taught. The outcome data, showing significant effect for only a small number of items, demonstrates the difficulty of outcome related research. 1. Introduction Peer assisted learning is a well-established methodology, practised across many educational disciplines. Several derivations of both terminology and teaching methods have developed [1]. Near-peer teaching—used here—is defined as teaching delivered by a trainee who is one or more years senior to another trainee on the same medical training course [2, 3], in this report, senior medical students teaching junior medical students. A systematic review of peer teaching and learning in clinical education in 2007 concluded that “peer teaching and learning is an effective educational intervention for health science students on clinical placements” [4]. In medicine near-peer teaching has been employed across a range of topics varying from anatomy to diversity awareness [5] to patient interviewing [6]. In line with the General Medical Council imperative relating to the doctor “developing the skills and practices of a competent teacher” teaching is considered good practice as part of students’ professional development [7]. A review of the literature [8] concluded, interestingly, that despite peer teaching offering well-defined advantages and being widely employed,
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