Not Just Us Lecturing at You: Evaluating Small Group Workshops at a National Surgical Conference

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• Academic Conferences

Background:

• Traditional academic conference lectures often limit learner engagement.
• A novel session format,
• Breakshops,
• utilizing small group instruction (SGI) was implemented at a national surgical conference.
• This study assessed participant perceptions, instructional quality, and interactivity of Breakshops.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate participant perceptions of the novel
• Breakshop
• session format.
• To assess the instructional quality and interactivity of SGI-based workshops.
• To determine the value and impact of Breakshops on learner engagement at a surgical conference.

Main Methods:

• Breakshops were implemented at the 2024 American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA) annual meeting, featuring SGI over slide-based presentations.
• A convergent parallel mixed-methods analysis included semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys.
• Participant satisfaction, perceived value, SGI feature use, and learner interactivity were assessed.

Main Results:

• Breakshops were perceived as a unique and valued addition, with a mean satisfaction score of 8.1/10 and 96.3% rating them as valuable.
• Increased use of SGI features correlated significantly with greater interaction (p=0.01) and perceived value (p=0.04).
• Opportunities for programmatic refinement of Breakshop implementation were identified.

Conclusions:

• Small group workshops emphasizing interaction and active learning, like Breakshops, enhance learner engagement.
• Breakshops provided unique value at the 2024 APSA conference.
• Broader adoption of SGI-focused workshops should be considered to improve conference learning experiences.