Student feedback: influencing the quality of teaching in a paediatric module

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of feedback on the quality of tutorials. Students completed structured feedback questionnaires on the perceived usefulness of teaching sessions. They perceived significant differences in the quality of tutorials delivered by experienced and inexperienced teachers (P < 0.01), although the differences tended to become less throughout the year. In the second year, teachers had advice from an experienced tutor in planning the sessions, in addition to receiving feedback from the students. During the second year, the students did not perceive any difference in the usefulness of these tutorials to them. The study showed that the quality of tutorials can be improved by passing structured feedback to the teacher, but that some skills training was also required to completely eliminate perceived differences.