Assessment of the Impact of Student Role on Performance during Reciprocal Peer Teaching in Human Gross Anatomy, Who Benefits?

Abstract

Reciprocal peer teaching is a prominent pedagogical approach utilized across medical education to counteract reduction in gross anatomy contact hours. Traditionally, the roles of peer teacher and peer learner are alternated among students within a dissection group. This instance of reciprocal peer teaching was examined during Covid protocol, which prompted a third role, non‐participants. Non‐participants were students not present during peer teaching sessions due to enforced limitations on the number of students present at a table at a given time for social distancing. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of student role (teacher, learner, or non‐participant) during reciprocal peer teaching on performance of 1st year medical students (n=34). The context of the study was a 10 week Human Gross Anatomy course taken first in the 1st year medical student curriculum. Twenty‐two peer teaching sessions were video recorded across the 4 blocks of anatomical content which resulted in (n=131) instances of reciprocal peer teaching. Peer teaching videos were cross‐referenced to track student role during a given session and whether or not an anatomical structure was taught or not by cross‐referencing the associated dissection structure list. Medical students throughout the course took 4 block laboratory practical exams which were collected and coded for student role, whether a question was answered correct or not, and if it was taught or not during the recorded peer teaching session. A GEE (generalized estimating equation) was used to determine if student role during reciprocal peer teaching sessions had a statistically significant effect on their likelihood to correctly answer lab practical questions, i.e., their performance. The factor role in the model was statistically significant (Wald χ2 = 34.95 (2), p<0.0001) and indicated that those in the role of peer teacher had 4.14 times more likelihood to correctly answer lab practical questions. In practicality, this equated to an average increase in mean lab practical answers correct of 13% for peer teachers compared to peer learners, whereas peer learners only had a 3% increase in mean lab practical answers correct compared to non‐participants. Given that peer teachers had to be involved in the hands‐on dissection of the anatomical content for their given peer teaching session, the boost to their performance is not surprising. What is surprising is the marginal difference between peer learners and non‐participants. These results may indicate that even though reciprocal peer teaching is premised as an active learning pedagogy, just because it is implemented doesn’t mean the peer learners are participating actively during teaching sessions and were largely passively being taught structures. A suggestion to increase peer learner benefit would be to allocate time for them to have an opportunity to identify and teach structures back to the peer teacher to increase their own retrieval practice. Future directions may incorporate the role of peer teacher as a facilitator rather than a passive lecturer, allowing the peer learners opportunities to become more actively involved in their own learning during reciprocal peer teaching sessions.