Students as teachers: The impact of a near-peer-led didactic teaching model on tutee confidence

Dear Sir

Senior medical students have been involved in near-peer teaching as both teachers and course designers and have been found to be effective in teaching junior students (Bulte et al. 2007; Ten Cate & Durning 2007). However, most of the published citations involve small groups (3–8 students per teacher) focusing on practical disciplines such as clinical examination skills, communication skills or anatomy dissection.

We report the development, delivery and evaluation of a comprehensive near-peer revision course for junior medical students, covering the complete biological sciences curriculum at the University of Birmingham (UoB).

In 2011, three UoB senior students (years 3–4) used their own time to develop and deliver an original revision course for junior students (years 1–2) two weeks before the latter group's end of year exams. The revision sessions comprised lectures and small groups covering the majority of the learning outcomes on the curriculum. Tutees were asked to evaluate each session separately, pre- and post-delivery, on a single evaluation form that contained 0 to 100 mm visual analogue scales (VAS).

They delivered 38 sessions (72 hours) to an average of 69.9 (±27.1) students per/session, yielding 2656 adequately completed evaluations. The average overall quality score rating was 83.8 (range 66.2–90.3) on the VAS. The average self-reported confidence before the sessions was 42.2 (range 30.3–50.8) on the VAS. The mean gain in confidence score was 19.1 (range 5.3–27.3). This demonstrates that the near-peer sessions were highly rated, and associated with considerable gain in self-reported confidence scores.

Despite implementing near-peer teaching in many universities and recognizing it to be beneficial for the tutor, tutees, and the programme (Ten Cate & Durning 2007), it has not been formalised in teaching curricula. Furthermore, there is little data available on near-peer teaching of entire undergraduate revision sessions for junior students and their acceptability.

This study demonstrates that near-peer teaching for junior biological sciences is feasible, and associated with improved self-reported confidence in all taught sessions. The value of such models in core-curricula should be considered, and merits outcome investigations in terms of impact on student performance in formal assessments.