A comparison of peer and faculty narrative feedback on medical student oral research presentations

The purpose of this project was to evaluate and improve the oral presentation assessment component of a required research training curriculum at an undergraduate medical school by analyzing the quantity, quality, and variety of peer and faculty feedback on medical student oral research presentations.

We conducted a program evaluation of oral presentation assessments during the 2016 and 2017 academic years. Second-year medical students (n=225) provided oral presentations of their research and received narrative feedback from peers and faculty. All comments were inductively coded for themes and Chi-square testing compared faculty and peer feedback differences in quantity, quality, and variety, as well as changes in feedback between the initial and final presentations. Comparative analysis of student PowerPoint presentation files before and after receiving feedback was also conducted.

Over two years, 2,617 peer and 498 faculty comments were collected and categorized into ten themes, with the top three being: presentation skills, visual presentation, and content. Both peers and judges favored providing positive over improvement comments, with peers tending to give richer feedback, but judges more diverse feedback. Nearly all presenters made some change from the initial to final presentations based on feedback.

Data from this analysis was used to restructure the oral presentation requirement for the students. Both peer and faculty formative feedback can contribute to developing medical student competence in providing feedback and delivering oral presentations. Future studies could assess student perceptions of this assessment to determine its value in developing communication skills.