Peer review of presentations through examination software

Peer evaluations are often utilized to allow student pharmacists practice in giving and receiving feedback. In a small class setting, these can easily be completed and feedback distributed quickly. However, in the larger class setting, reviewing and disseminating peer feedback can be quite cumbersome, especially if using paper format. The purpose of this educational activity was to create a process for peer evaluations that allows for efficient collection and dissemination of peer feedback of presentations of student pharmacists and describe the student experience with this new format.

In Research Topics in Pharmacy II, an electronic peer-evaluation tool was created using electronic examination software to collect and distribute this peer review in a timely fashion during and after each class session. At the completion of this course, a survey was distributed to collect student pharmacists' perception of this electronic peer-review process.

A total of 63 of 91 students (69%) completed the survey. The majority of the students (98.4%) "strongly agreed" or "agreed" the peer-evaluation items made it easy to provide feedback to their peers and 79% preferred this electronic method of feedback vs. paper format. Overall, 93.6% of student pharmacists felt they were more engaged during the presentations as a result of providing electronic feedback.

Maximizing our resources by creating an electronic peer evaluation with our current examination software, allowed for an efficient means of obtaining and disseminating peer review that was timely and well-received by students.