Effect of teaching context and tutor workshop on tutorial skills

Figures & data

Table

Practice points

• Effective faculty development workshops are essential to develop and sustain the quality of teaching.

• A faculty development workshop tailored to tutors’ needs within their teaching unit improves their problem-content knowledge and ability to guide students’ learning, especially for tutors with low students’ ratings.

• To be efficient, the design of workshops should consider specificities of teaching contexts since they affect the effectiveness of workshops.

Table 1.  Tutors’ evaluation of the workshop usefulness (n = 112 tutors) on a five-point Likert scale (5 = I totally agree to 1 = I totally disagree)

Overall, the workshop:	Mean ± SD
• was very useful for my role as a tutor	4.36 ± 0.77
• furthered my understanding of the tutorial group functioning process	4.19 ± 0.82
• furthered my understanding of the importance of small-group facilitation in PBL	4.13 ± 0.82
• provided useful strategies to improve content knowledge with the group of tutors in my teaching unit	4.28 ± 0.95
• provided useful strategies to improve the functioning of small groups	4.27 ± 0.89

Table 2.  Scores before workshop (baseline), one month and one year after the workshop of students’ mean (±SD) ratings of 126 tutors’ on several tutorial skills (overall performance, problem-content knowledge, skill in guiding students through the PBL process, and ability to facilitate student participation)

	Overall performance^a	Content knowledge^b	Guide in PBL^b	Student participation^b
Workshop not attended (n = 96)
Baseline	4.3 ± 0.7	4.7 ± 0.4	4.6 ± 0.3	4.1 ± 0.6
One month	4.1 ± 0.8	4.6 ± 0.4	4.4 ± 0.4	4.1 ± 0.7
One year	4.2 ± 0.9	4.6 ± 0.6	4.3 ± 0.5	4.3 ± 0.4
Workshop attended (n = 30)
Baseline	4.1 ± 0.9	4.5 ± 0.7	4.5 ± 0.4	4.1 ± 0.7
One month	4.1 ± 0.9	4.5 ± 0.7	4.5 ± 0.6	4.2 ± 0.5
One year	4.3 ± 0.7	4.6 ± 0.4	4.6 ± 0.4	4.4 ± 0.4

Notes: ^aThe ‘overall performance’ is rated on a three-point scale (5 = outstanding, 3 = good, 1 = to be improved). ^bThe ‘problem-content knowledge’, ‘skill in guiding students through the PBL process’, and ‘ability to facilitate student participation’ are rated on a five-point Likert scale (from 5 = completely agree to 1 = completely disagree).

Table 3.  Effect of workshop attendance, tutors’ baseline score, teaching unit and teaching experience, and their interactions on the score differences in students’ ratings of several tutorial skills one year after the workshop (overall performance, problem-content knowledge, skill in guiding students through the PBL process, and ability to facilitate student participation)

	Mean squares^a	F (df)^a	p^a
Overall performance:^b
workshop	0.143	0.314 (1;100)	0.576
baseline score	28.065	61.977 (1;100)	0.000*
teaching unit	1.375	3.036 (12;100)	0.001*
workshop × teaching unit	0.351	0.774 (10;100)	0.653
teaching experience	0.208	0.460 (1;100)	0.499
Content knowledge:^c
workshop	0.106	0.797 (1;100)	0.374
baseline score	18.126	135.663 (1;100)	0.000*
teaching unit	0.698	5.227 (12;100)	0.001*
workshop × teaching unit	0.357	2.672 (10;100)	0.006*
teaching experience	0.011	0.083 (1;100)	0.774
PBL guide:^d
workshop	1.071	7.776 (1;100)	0.006*
baseline score	7.619	55.308 (1;100)	0.000*
teaching unit	0.307	2.231 (12;100)	0.015*
workshop × teaching unit	0.143	1.040 (10;100)	0.416
teaching experience	0.003	0.024 (1;100)	0.878
Student participation:^e
workshop	0.085	0.610 (1;100)	0.436
baseline score	29.044	208.259 (1;100)	0.000*
teaching unit	0.299	2.141 (12;100)	0.020*
workshop × teaching unit	0.102	0.732 (1;100)	0.692
teaching experience	0.594	4.263 (1;100)	0.042*

Notes: ^aMultivariate analyses of variance with workshop attendance and teaching unit as between-subject factors; score before workshop and teaching experience as covariates. All factors and interactions were tested. Interactions are designated by ×.

^bR² = 0.612; ^cR² = 0.743; ^dR² = 0.546; ^eR² = 0.738.

Figure 1. Effect of workshop attendance, teaching unit and baseline score on the score differences in content knowledge of 126 tutors one year after the workshop. 1a: score differences for the 30 tutors who did not attend the workshop (•) and for the 96 tutors who attended the workshop (○) for each of the 13 teaching units studied. 1b: correlation between the score difference 1 year after workshop and the baseline score obtained before the workshop for individual tutors.

No workshop (•, dashed line): Pearson's R = −0.147: p = 0.438; n = 30. Workshop (○, full line): Pearson's R = −0.802: p = 0.000; n = 96.

Table 4.  Correlations between the score difference after workshop and the baseline score obtained before the workshop for individual tutors

	Workshop not attended		Workshop attended
	Pearson's R	p	Pearson's R	p
Overall performance	−0.411	0.024*	−0.707	0.000*
PBL guide	−0.448	0.013*	−0.663	0.000*
Content knowledge	−0.147	0.438	−0.802	0.000*
Student participation	−0.715	0.000*	−0.821	0.000*