Biomedical science students as teachers to levels KS3 and KS4

Students-as-teachers is a useful pedagogy for future professionals that require teaching abilities in their profession such as nurses and medical doctors. However, this has been little explored in other human health sciences programmes such as biomedical (BMS) and medical science (BMedS) degrees. A novel pedagogy has been introduced at De Montfort University (UK) to develop teaching abilities in second and final year students enrolled in BMS and BMedS programmes. A total of 15 students were deployed to Bermuda in November 2016 for 2 weeks to teach different topics of human biology and microbiology to secondary school children level KS3 (aged 11-14) and KS4 (aged 14-18) with academic-supervision. Briefly, this pedagogy consisted of students distributed into groups of 5 to encourage peer-interaction, with one group (the teaching group) responsible for leading different teaching/learning sessions in microbiology (e.g. virus and bacteria, disease, hygiene, prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, etc.). The other groups peer-assessed the performance of the teaching group in conjunction with the academics. This approach facilitated the provision of comprehensive feedback so students could improve their performance throughout their deployment. 73% of students enjoyed teaching and 100% highlighted that were highly satisfied with the experience. 29% would like to do a teaching career (40% of students reported uncertainty about their future career); however, 80% of students highlighted that this experience will help to decide their career. Only 13% students reported that they struggled in preparing their topics, particularly to KS3. Finally, students indicated that the best part of the experience was inspiring young people and when schoolchildren provided feedback and were interactive. Confidence was perceived as a skill to improve. Students reported high levels of satisfaction and recommended the inclusion of similar pedagogies in their degrees. We consider that involving students in teaching provide some teaching abilities and critical transversal competences.