Using PeerWise to Promote Online Peer Learning Amongst First Year Medical Students

Jason Walsh and Phil Smith School of Medicine, Cardiff University

INTRODUCTION
PeerWise is an online resource that allows students to write, share and review single best answer questions pertinent to their course. Students are awarded various electronic badges for writing, answering and discussing questions with their peers online. Medical Student knowledge is being increasingly assessed through single best answer (SBA) questions. Cardiff University School of Medicine has moved towards having the majority of written examination questions in this format. Therefore, formative SBA questions are in demand. However, writing questions is an onerous task. Clinical staff members have neither the time nor the incentives to develop formative material, focusing their attention on writing questions for high-stakes summative examinations. PeerWise puts the onus of formative question writing on students. Resulting in the rapid creation of a large bank of formative questions. This benefits both staff and students. Additionally, students will benefit from engaging in the question writing and review processes. PeerWise is easily accessible on smart phones, tablets and PCs, and has a social networking aspect, whereby students can discuss and rate each others questions. This is likely to appeal to medical students. In this project a PeerWise module was setup. A mandatory teaching session invited all students in year 1 of Cardiff School of Medicine to register on the module and practice writing and answering questions. Student activity was subsequently monitored by two online invigilators.

RESULTS 284 first year students (of 297) registered on the PeerWise module. 268 answered questions and 142 contributed questions. 5% of registered students wrote 63% of questions. Over 2 months 670 questions were generated and 33760 answers were submitted. Course activity increased exponentially two weeks preceding written exams and peaked two days before exams.

EXAMPLE QUESTION

METHOD
1) A module on PeerWise entitled Year one practice was created, accessible to every first year medical student at Cardiff using their student number. All year one students were invited to a mandatory teaching session for which they were told to bring a laptop or electronic device with internet capability. A one hour teaching session with internet access was delivered. During the session students registered on the PeerWise module on which they were asked to write questions, then answer and review the questions written by their peers. Students were told a question appearing on PeerWise may feature in their summative exam. During the session facilitators circulated offering assistance. Student activity on the module was monitored over the following months.

CONCLUSIONS
The PeerWise module has been shown to be popular learning resource amongst first year medical students, particularly preceding the summative examinations. Students are encouraged to write, answer and review questions through peer feedback, question rating, earning electronic badges and competing for a position on the leaderboards. This encourages independent and peer learning. In this PeerWise module a rapidly growing question bank pertinent to the course, has been created, a valuable resource which can be expanded by future first year cohorts. The creation of this module has the added benefit of taking the onus of providing formative material away from staff . This approach could be extended to all years of the medical school.

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