Peer feedback needs practice and faculty support to be effective in simulation based education
Background Peer evaluation drives effective self-assessment, encourages autonomous learning and enhances both metacognitive skills and critical reasoning skills. Students, by commenting on the work of others, gain a better understanding of the criteria required for successful performance and develop skills of objective judgment which can be transferred to the assessment of their own work.
Methods Peer feedback was introduced to simulated patient history taking consultations. Students were required to evaluate the observed performance and provide verbal feedback to their peers. This was compared to facility review and end of term examination results. In interview students indicated that they benefited from the opportunity to engage in peer feedback. Students reported that they felt more comfortable receiving feedback from peers than providing feedback to peers.
Results 65% of students rated peer performance as excellent which did not correlate with summative OSCE results. When students did mark the borderline grade, a significant difference was found for one individual element of the feedback score. Students ticked "lacked confidence/fluidity" significantly more frequently than any other of the elements suggesting they felt more comfortable relaying this element of performance feedback as it did not address content understanding or knowledge.
Conclusion Ability to give constructive feedback should be viewed as an essential skill but for success students need to be taught how to give effective peer feedback. Emotions and loyalties affect student’s unwillingness to find fault with a fellow student’s work. Students may need more opportunities to conduct peer assessment to become familiar and comfortable with this process. Co-operative learning in simulation can combine with peer feedback to produce effective social constructivist approaches; however faculty input is required to monitor and validate the feedback.
Funding
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
History
Data Availability Statement
All data analysed during this study are included in this published article. The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Comments
The original article is available at https://www.researchsquare.com/Published Citation
Offiah G. et al. Peer feedback needs practice and faculty support to be effective in simulation based education. Research Square. 2020Publication Date
29 January 2020External DOI
Department/Unit
- Beaumont Hospital
- Surgery
- Undergraduate Research
- SIM Centre for Simulation Education and Research
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLCVersion
- Submitted Version (Preprint)