Interteaching within a human physiology course: a comparison of first- and second-year students' learning skills and perceptions

This article describes student perceptions and outcomes in relation to the use of a novel interteaching approach. The study sample (n = 260) was taken from a large human physiology class, which included both first- and second-year students. However, unlike the first-year students, the second-year students had significant prior knowledge, having completed a previous physiology course. Active learning, where students were required to engage with course material in a self-directed manner before tutorials and to identify areas of difficulty and discuss these within tutorial sessions, was a central component of the study. The second-year students adapted quickly to the novel approach, as indicated by stable levels of perceived difficulty and understanding. In contrast, the first-year students demonstrated a decrease in perceived difficulty and an increase in perceived individual understanding throughout the study. These results notwithstanding, there was a consistent low level of interest for both years but no significant difference between the first- and second-year individual and group learning skills by the end of the study, as measured by their performance in the tutorials. Overall, the results were encouraging, with both years achieving a reasonably high learning skill level (average: ∼70%) within the interteaching environment. The improvement of active learning shown by the first-year students may have compensated, to some extent, for the prior learning advantage of the second-year students, since both groups achieved similar marks in the written components of final exams for both interteaching modules.