Learning the educator role: a course for medical students

Abstract

The design and evaluation of a revised course on educational skills for medical students is described. The overall aim of this elective was to help students develop a working concept of their educator role regarding themselves, their peers, and their patients. The programme comprised 15 2-hour weekly meetings consisting of small-group discussion and exercises around issues of self-learning skills, peer teaching, and the process of patient education. Advanced preparation was promoted by readings and special assignments. Self-assessment, peer-assessment, and continuous assessment based on course-work were used to help student learning and to provide a basis for final grading. During a 3-year study period, the Course Valuing Inventory (CVI) and a goal-oriented questionnaire were used for course evaluation. Evaluation done on five consecutive classes showed favourable indices of course attractiveness. It also showed broad progress of most students in the course goals and high positive CVI scores for cognitive, personal and behavioural learnings, in addition to course valuing. Students' perceptions of improvement in self-appraisal, communication skills and personal growth were related findings. Significant, moderate correlations were found between CVI learning scores and both the self-ratings of progress in the course goals and of attitude towards the educator role. Reinforcement of the positive attitude towards this role was a valuable finding related to a lasting effect: a significant increase in the choice of undergraduate preceptorships by the participants when compared to the control sample of students not exposed to this learning experience.

Peer assisted learning: a planning and implementation framework: AMEE Guide no. 30

“…Often tutor training is relatively short and focused before the PAL interaction, although in some cases multiple focused training Peer assisted learning framework sessions are scheduled over a more extended period of time (Sobral 1989;Blatt et al 2000;Culver et al 2003b) or occur on a more regular basis between individual PAL interactions in a series (Matthes et al 2002).…”

“…Some programmes require potential tutors to have passed all assessments in the relevant subjects (Glynn et al 2006) or to have high academic achievement (Trevino & Eiland 1980;Escovitz 1990;Howman et al 2002;Hurley et al 2003;Forester et al 2004); others ask course organisers to select or recommend suitable tutors (Walker-Bartnick et al 1984;Lake 1999). Some tutors may be required to have completed a course on teaching (Sobral 1989). A few non-medical PAL projects have used tutors with lowerthan-average achievement or learning difficulties (Maher et al 1998;Scruggs & Mastropieri 1998), reporting considerable benefits of PAL participation for these tutors.…”

“…Most institutions do not currently make extensive use of PAL in their formal core curriculum, although in the very small number of institutions that do (Sobral 2002) a more integrated approach than that taken by this framework will probably be required, so that the whole curriculum with multiple PAL initiatives can be considered collectively. In such programmes it may be possible to offer generic tutortraining (Sobral 1989), a number of different complementary PAL teaching experiences and perhaps the integrated assessment of a students' competence in teaching. Courses for healthcare students on learning to teach which are not linked to specific PAL projects (Pasquale & Pugnaire 2002;Bardach et al 2003), and initiatives to increase student participation in educational management and organisation (Visser et al 1998) and the evaluation of trainee medical teachers (Fry & Morris 2004) have also been reported in the literature, but detailed discussion of these topics is beyond the scope of this guide.…”

A Multi-Level Assessment of a Program to Teach Medical Students to Teach

“…They often have rich life and educational experiences before and during medical school and have been an underutilized resource as teachers of peers. Previous reports have described students in the following teaching roles: peer tutors (Goodfellow and Schofield, 2001;Johansen et al, 1992;Schaffer et al, 1990;Sobral, 1989;Solomon and Crowe, 2001;Trevino and Eiland, 1980;Walker-Bartnick et al, 1984), standardized patients (Fleikert et al, 1992;Gelula, 1998;Harris and Miller, 1990;Sasson et al, 1999), physical diagnosis skills (Barnes et al, 1978;Escovitz, 1990;Flax and Gerrard, 1974;Haist et al, 1997Haist et al, , 1998Ross et al, 1989;Rund et al, 1977), cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills (Mowbray et al, 1987), problem-based learning (Johansen et al, 1992;Solomon and Crowe, 2001) basic sciences (Hendelman and Boss, 1986;Resnick and MacDougall, 1976), peer teachers as part of a learning to teach course (Burns et al, 1996;Craig and Page, 1987;Greenberg and Jewett, 1987;Paiva et al, 1982;Sobral, 1989;Ross et al, 1989) and a student-designed and taught course (Josephson and Whelan, 2002). Few of these reports describe a comprehensive evaluation regarding their efficacy and generalizability.…”

Self-report visual scale of course appeal

“…This instrument features the item 'I would like to take another course like this one', which shows a substantial correlation with the total score for the course valuing section of the inventory. Previous work has shown that CVI's course valuing section is a good measure of the appeal of an educational experience (Sobral 1989).…”