Minor tweaks to tutorial presentation improved students’ perceptions of our mass tutorial

Abstract

Introduction: In the first weeks of medical school, students learn fundamental cell biology in a series of lectures taught by five lecturers, followed by a mass tutorial session. In this exploratory study, we examined students’ perceptions of the mass tutorial session over two academic years to find out if they viewed the tutorials differently after minor tweaks were introduced. Methods: Reflective questions were posted to the undergraduate Year 1 Medical students at the end of each mass tutorial session in 2019 and 2020. Content analysis was conducted on students’ anonymous responses, using each response as the unit of analysis. The responses were categorised under the learning objectives, with responses coded under multiple categories where appropriate. The distribution of the counts from responses in 2019 and 2020 was compared, and the tutorial slides used over the two years were reviewed in conjunction with students’ perceptions to identify changes. Results: In 2019, we collected 122 responses which coded into 127 unique counts, while in 2020, 119 responses coded into 143 unique counts. Compared to 2019, we noted increases in the percentage of counts under “Link concepts” and “Apply knowledge”, with concomitant decreases in percentage of counts in “Recall contents”. We also found that the 2020 tutorial contained additional slides, including a summary slide and lecture slides in their explanations of answers to the tutorial questions. Conclusion: Minor tweaks in the tutorial presentation could improve students’ perceptions of our mass tutorials.