Having recently taken over as chairman of Doc-to-Doctor (a peer led teaching society) I thought it made sense to sign myself up for the PAL (peer assisted learning) award. So far the training sessions for the scheme have been really useful. We were introduced to theories such as Socratic questioning and given tips on things such as engaging shy students or building up towards large group discussions. They have also given the Doc-to-Doctor committee a chance to reflect upon how we can go about improving our skills in terms of facilitating group work sessions.
Since the aim of the Doc-to-Doctor sessions is to get students to integrate their knowledge from across the medical school curriculum, I feel that Socratic questioning will be a good framework on which to base our group sessions. I believe it will help to ensure that we as tutors are facilitating learning rather than just delivering material. I plan to use this form of questioning style to try and get students to think more critically about the curriculum material and to open up discussion. It is my hope that this approach will help students to become more reflective in their learning.
The teaching sessions for Doc-to-Doctor will start next semester and preparation for these is well underway. The committee has so far spent a great deal of time preparing teaching materials for the group work sessions. We have gone over banks of questions from past years and re-written large chunks in an effort to increase the amount of material that tests true understanding of a topic rather than just rote factual learning. We hope to finalise this over the next week and then make a start on a set of lectures.
