106 - Does Regular Attendance in Near-peer Anatomy Tutoring Improve Anatomy Laboratory Performance?

Poster Board Number: 106
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Abstract Body : Peer assisted learning (PAL) is an increasingly popular educational tool being used in medical schools alongside traditional course curricula. Data suggests PAL provides academic and social benefits to both tutees and tutors, by creating a positive learning environment and allowing tutees to adjust to the rigors of medical school. However, there are few concrete recommendations on how to implement new PAL programs, in order to improve outcomes for first-year students. In 2021, NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine launched a near-peer tutoring program (NPT) where 10 high-performing second-year students led, on average, ten group tutoring sessions per week. Each session was attended by 10–30 first-year students. The program offered 101 sessions in total in its first semester, filling 1,516 tutee “slots” among 172 unique first-year students. Of the fall sessions (14 weeks), a large proportion were dedicated to anatomy laboratory (AL) content (38 sessions; 2–4/week). Students were permitted to attend one AL tutoring session per week each. Here, we used data from the inaugural semester of the NYIT COM Peer-to-Peer tutoring program to investigate if tutees who regularly attended AL tutoring sessions showed greater test-to-test improvement than those who did not attend sessions (or did not regularly attend sessions).

We utilized AL exam scores (Z-standardized by exam) from the Fall 2021 semester. Improvements in AL performance were quantified by the average difference in Z-score in between subsequent exam pairs (i.e. average of Z-score increase/decrease between exams 1–2, 2–3, and 3–4). Student attendance in the NPT program was quantified as either regular (>10 sessions; i.e. nearly or every week), moderate (5-10 session), infrequent (1–5 sessions), or never (0 session). We found that students who attended tutoring sessions regularly had a higher average exam-to-exam improvement than students who never attended any sessions (0.26 standard deviations [SD’s]; p < 0.0039). Additionally, those who never attended any tutoring sessions had poorer average exam-to-exam improvement than students who attended with any frequency (regularly, moderately, or rarely, p < 0.05). We further performed a resampling analysis to account for initial exam grades of regular attendees, and specific improvement and tutoring attendance between consecutive exams. Students who always attended tutoring between consecutive exams had a greater test-to-test improvement than students who never attended in 2 out of 3 exams, accounting for initial exam scores (p < 0.05). Together, this study describes one possible structure of NPT, and demonstrates that regular attendance in NPT can positively impact AL performance.