Near-peer teaching and exam results: the acceptability, impact, and assessment outcomes of a novel biological sciences revision programme taught by senior medical students

Abstract

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. 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. 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. 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.