Development of a Flipped Classroom Approach to Teaching Lung Pathology: The Evaluation of a Formative On-Line Quiz Primer to Encourage Active Learning

Within the UK there are concerns around the implications of reduced staffing levels within medicine for meeting clinical demand and teaching commitments. There are also concerns regarding limited pathology content in undergraduate medical courses, reductions in postgraduate pathology enrolments, and the proportion of current staff approaching retirement age. As a result, there is interest in approaches, such as the flipped classroom, to reduce medical teaching resource requirements and improve effectiveness. This paper describes the rationale, development, and evaluation of a formative online quiz primer for tutorial sessions delivered to third year undergraduate medical students to improve student engagement, understanding and staff satisfaction. A student perception questionnaire was administered to attendees of two teaching sessions, with thirty one students responding. Student behaviour during the teaching session was influenced (rather than their immediate pre-exam behaviour). Students reported using a range of devices to access the quiz, good usability, general improvements in understanding and engagement during the teaching sessions, which was also supported by participant observation. This required a significant investment of preparation time, which would be sustainable if the quiz questions could be used for several years and shared across multiple sites. Further work is needed to compare student perceptions with actual measured understanding and to look at the process of creating additional resources.