Selfies 2015: Peer teaching in medical sciences through video clips – a case study

Abstract

Background. Anecdotally, 2015 was declared the year of the selfie. The theme of selfies is used as an opportunity to engage neuroanatomy students by drawing from it as a newly created art form by means of models and video clips.

Objectives. To provide a synopsis of student perceptions of a team project to inform further project development and refinement.

Methods. Topics were allocated to teams of 5 - 6 students, constituting a class of 27. Teams were required to prepare a model that would demonstrate a topic, which would be used to produce a video clip presented as a teaching tool. Three focus groups comprising 6 - 8 students subsequently held discussions to determine student perspectives of the project.

Results. Students viewed the project as a means of facilitating teamwork and peer learning and of enhancing presentation skills. While all the teams enjoyed the project and found it to be beneficial, students preferred making the model rather than producing the video clip. Nonetheless, students felt particularly accomplished on seeing the completed video clip. A dominant view was that the project provided enhancement of the subject content, pertaining largely to the team’s project, while the knowledge gained of other topics was limited. Some students preferred conventional teaching and found the synopsis provided by the lecturer at the end of each presentation to be particularly useful.

Conclusion. This case study provides evidence to support simple strategies of integrating discipline-specific content (‘hard skills’) with general education (‘soft skills’), as required of higher education.