Students' Opinion Towards Peer Education Program at Schooling of Vocational Skills

Abstract

Background: Skill laboratories help to improve vocational skills in an environment similar to real-life conditions while also making it possible to get together a theory with its application. Student centered learning programs put the student responsible on other students’ learning progress along with his/her very own learning progress. Because of this, peer education program is an active learning method which can successfully be used in higher education. Purpose: This descriptive research has been conducted to understand students’ thoughts regarding the effects of peer education program on teaching / reinforcing vocational skills and to pinpoint the areas of the education program that needs to be improved. Methods: Two different groups, each containing 20-24 voluntarily participated 4th grade students, whose GPA being 2.5 out of 4.0 and higher, who takes “Health Education” course and has no failed courses from previous years of their study and on the brink of graduation has been selected. 5-6 peers under a teacher’s superintendence and four students working with each peer was the core model of student distribution. After the theoretic education, laboratory work, in which the topic-related skills applied, has been done with peers. Results: 53.3% of the students stated seating order was goodly designed; while 26.6% found the equipments used as satisfactory, 25.8% was unsatisfactory with them; 23.6% stated that the printed materials was lack. Students who participated in the study generally expressed positive feelings regarding to group adaptation, group atmosphere and communication. When asked their feelings about peer education, student responses were: helps learning (42.4%), increases the learning performance (50.2%), increases learning autonomy (49.3%), strengthens critical point of view (44.1%), improves cognitive skills through interaction (50.7%), improves collaboration skill (54.1%), improves memorability (45.4%). Conclusions: In our study, vast majority of the students stated that peer education program at the laboratory is a useful and applicable method which eases their learning. Peer education, which can be used in nursery and midwifery schooling, in laboratory environment has positive results like increased learning, knowledge development, improved clinical decision-making ability. Peer education eases learning skills; increases learning and memorability of what is learned thanks to high number of recurrences.