Abstract:

Pedagogical research has shown the relevance of involving students in teaching and peer-teaching, particularly as learners involved in these activities have reported better learning and performance. This could be attributed to different reasons such as enhancement of active thinking about the topics taught, self-learning, translating the topics’ concepts into one’s own words, etc. Engaging students through teaching could provide them with key transversal competences and will encourage them to develop their “teaching” skills. An innovative group of academics is undertaking an ambitious process to involve undergraduate BSc Biomedical Science and BMedSci Medical Science students in teaching and peer-teaching at De Montfort University (DMU, Leicester, UK). These include students teaching secondary school children (educating younger students) and peer-teaching. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the initial academic and students impressions of these two novel initiatives during this course as previously there were very little or non-existent. Peer-teaching was firstly initiated with BMedSci students last academic course 2015/16 in an attempt of teaching basic skills to respond to an outbreak, an activity that received high level of student satisfaction as discussed previously. However, we have revisited this teaching session to make it more robust, in which students for both programmes will need to develop an intervention programme to protect human health in the aftermath of an outbreak in the UK, a pedagogical activity that we are co-developing with the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain). The other teaching initiative that has been created on the biomedical and medical programme for the first time involved educating pupils in Bermuda (an overseas UK territory). Second and final year students of both programmes visited different Bermuda schools and colleges to deliver the same one hour session chosen by the DMU academic. In addition, these DMU students were involved in promoting their profession (biomedical and medical science). The outcome of both these projects can be beneficial in improving learning and engagement among students enrolled in any human-health related degree.

Keywords:

Peer teaching, students as teachers, student learning and engagement.