Self-Observation and Peer Feedback as a Faculty Development Approach for Problem-Based Learning Tutors: A Program Evaluation

ABSTRACT

Problem: Good teaching requires spontaneous, immediate, and appropriate action in response to various situations. It is even more crucial in problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials, as the tutors, while directing students toward the identification and attainment of learning objectives, must stimulate them to contribute to the process and provide them with constructive feedback. PBL tutors in medicine lack opportunities to receive feedback from their peers on their teaching strategies. Moreover, as tutorials provide little or no time to stop and think, more could be learned by reflecting on the experience than from the experience itself. We designed and evaluated a faculty development approach to developing PBL tutors that combined self-reflection and peer feedback processes, both powerful techniques for improving performance in education. Intervention: We developed an observation instrument for PBL facilitation to be used both by tutors to self-observe and reflect on own teaching strategies and by peers to observe and provide feedback to tutors. Twenty PBL sessions were video-recorded. Tutors completed the instrument immediately after their PBL session and again while watching their video-recorded session (self-observation). A group of three observers completed the instrument while watching each recorded session and provided feedback to each tutor (peer observation and feedback). We investigated tutors' perceptions of the feasibility and acceptability of the approach and gathered data on its effectiveness in enhancing tutors' facilitation skills. Context: The preclinical medical curriculum at the University of Geneva is essentially taught by PBL. A new program of faculty development based on self-observation and peer feedback was offered to voluntary tutors and evaluated. Outcome: Our results suggest that self-observation and peer feedback, supported by an instrument, can be effective in enhancing tutors' facilitation skills. Reflection on self-observation raised teachers' awareness of the effectiveness of the strategies they used to foster student learning. This motivated a need to change their teaching practice. However, for the changes to become operative, peer feedback was required, providing the cues and strategies needed to improve the facilitation skills. Lessons Learned: Peer coaching was considered feasible and useful to improve tutors' facilitation skills. Evaluating the program made it possible to assess tutors' needs and the reasons underlying their difficulties, and this in turn provided the basis for advanced workshops. Nonetheless, aspects related to logistics and the time constraints of such an individualized approach, as well as the cultural appropriation of peer coaching, might be obstacles that need to be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer coaching
• reflection
• peer feedback
• problem-based learning
• tutors
• faculty development

Acknowledgments

The project was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and exempted of formal review by the Chair of the Ethics Committee for Public Health Research.