'Lurker' to learner: Encouraging collaborative learning using a scaffolding and peer assisted learning approach

Cardi! University School of Medicine is faced with a problem familiar to medical schools worldwide: motivating students to become deep learners rather than strategic or super"cial learners.(1) Competition, commonly present in medical schools, (2) is also seen in the online collaborative learning platform, PeerWise. (3) PeerWise, a free online collaborative learning platform that allows a cohort of students to generate their own multiple-choice question (MCQ) bank, has been used at Cardi! Medical School since 2013. While the pedagogical underpinning of the platform is sound, there is concern that students are not using PeerWise to optimise deep learning. The gami"cation features may instead incite a competitive environment encouraging undesirable behaviours, namely ‘trolling’, (4) anonymous verbal abuse and ‘lurking’, (5) gaining from the ‘community of practice’ without contributing. This report uses an educational action research strategy to re#ect on the delivery of PeerWise as a learning tool in the Cardi! medical curriculum and seek to improve engagement in order to promote deeper learning. Cardi! Medical School follows a case-based learning (CBL) curriculum, delivering 6 cases in Year 1. This is well-suited to consolidation of learning through use of PeerWise as students can write questions speci"c to their current case learning objectives. C4ME SUPPLEMENT The British Student Doctor, 2020;4(3):22-24 doi: 10.18573/bsdj.195 C4ME Supplement