A Gateway to Medicine programme at University of Dundee was implemented as a “pre-medical school” degree. While part of the medical school, the Gateway students found that the course lacks clinical theory or practical skills, therefore, a range of clinical knowledge and skills based sessions needed to be designed.

My peer and I designed the cardiovascular based session using our knowledge from medicine (K1). The use of small-group tutorials for teaching has proven to be an effective method in many educational environments. It encourages the change from teacher-centred learning to a more student-centred approach (Wong, 2018). Small-group teaching allows for increased personalised learning, student engagement and collaboration (Mills and Alexander, 2013). Furthermore, small- group tutorials can take the form of “stations” whereby students proceed to complete the task at one station in a set time before moving on to the next in the circuit. This station-based approach largely follows the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) format, designed by Harden et al. (1975) but encourages self-directed learning and collaboration between students as they work through the given tasks (Kooloos et al., 2012) (K2). Using this evidence and my knowledge of implementing programmes at Dundee, gained through an Interview with the Dean of the Medical school (Appendix_3), I was able to design the cardiovascular session with my peer (K1–V3).

Before designing my session, I observed and helped to facilitate the respiratory session designed by others. Gaining feedback from the students on this session, a decision was made to change the original format of 2 separate sessions to a single 2-hour session which included both the theory and practical. The learning objectives of the study were outlined at the beginning of the PowerPoint (Appendix_4) and each station had its own set of learning objectives outlined in the lesson plan (Appendix_5). A PowerPoint of the theory relevant to the session and a demonstration of how to perform a cardiovascular examination was to be given in the first half of the session, followed by the circuit of stations in the second (Appendix_6). Using a combination of a lecture-based approach and interactive station-based approach allowed me to personalise the teaching provided, keeping in mind that each student learns differently, allowing us to accommodate this (A1–K3).

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I kept to the level of their academic programme (K2), ensuring only information that could be related to their own course work was covered and avoid overwhelming the students. It became apparent during the respiratory sessions that the students had variable levels of basic science knowledge, with some of them being from non-science backgrounds. Therefore, I found it difficult to assess at what level the cardiovascular lecture should be taught. My peer and I debated at length the complexity of information which should be included within the PowerPoint. We included a very basic level of science. Those with minimal knowledge would, therefore, not feel overwhelmed with the theory given and those with more knowledge could expand on this at the interactive stations where teaching can be more personalised to that individual. Only a small number of students attended the session and by splitting them in to groups I allowed each student’s learning experience to be tailored to them and those who initially knew less began learning from their more knowledgeable peers (K1- K2). I noted that with smaller groups of students (2 per station), students were more engaged and had equal opportunity to take part in the specific tasks compared to other larger interactive teaching experiences I have taken. Those who may withdraw themselves in larger groups found no confident students to hide behind and so became more involved. As recognised by Mills and Alexander (2013), the ideal small-group size is between 5 and 8 people. I think this is a good example of an experience where this might not be the case (K3).

Moreover, through feedback gained from my peer and the students that attended the session (Appendix_7), I have recognised an improvement in my time-keeping skills. In previous sessions I found myself rushing towards the end. In this session, I made sure to check my watch at the start of each station so I knew when to advise the students to move round and ensured the session finished on time. I will remember to use this method in future.