Attendance of Near-Peer Tutoring Sessions Improves Academic Performance of First-Year Medical Students

Mohammed K Khalil; William S Wright

doi:10.1007/s40670-022-01661-3

Attendance of Near-Peer Tutoring Sessions Improves Academic Performance of First-Year Medical Students

Med Sci Educ. 2022 Oct 22;32(6):1433-1438. doi: 10.1007/s40670-022-01661-3. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Authors

Mohammed K Khalil¹, William S Wright¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, 701 Grove Road, Greenville, SC 29605 USA.

Abstract

Introduction: Many medical schools have implemented near-peer tutoring (NPT) programs based on the substantial benefits of these programs to both tutors and tutees. This study correlated the frequency of attending weekly NPT sessions to students' academic performance, and also compared performance of high and low attending students.

Methods: Twenty-one weekly NPT sessions were delivered by fourth-year (M4) students to first-year (M1) students. Attendance was recorded, and accordingly students were divided into three groups, high (15-21 sessions), moderate (7-14 sessions), and low (0-6 sessions) attendance groups. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between students' frequency of attendance and their overall performance on overall basic medical sciences at the end of M1 year and M2 mid-year NBME® CBSE. Students' performance was also analyzed using ANCOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test to compare differences between the three attendance groups.

Results: An increase in number of attended NPT weekly sessions corresponds with an increase in students' performance on overall M1 basic sciences weighted average (r(196) = .240, p ≤ 0.001) and the M2 mid-year NBME® CBSE (r(196) = .325, p ≤ 0.001). High attending students performed significantly higher than low attending students on overall M1 weighted average of basic science courses (F(2, 192) = 8.518, p < .001) and M2 mid-year NBME® CBSE (F(2, 192) = 15.494, p < .001).

Conclusion: Attending NPT weekly sessions is a valuable experience that is associated with an improvement in M1 medical students' academic performance. However, low performing students tend to miss attending NPT weekly sessions.

Keywords: Basic medical sciences; Near-peer tutoring; Peer tutoring; Peer-assisted learning; Tutoring.

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