As part of the series on the Summer Term Programme, in this week's MicroCPD, David Morley (Birmingham Medical School) discusses the Group Poster Project completed by medical students in the post-exam period.
The MBChB requires students to study a broad range of topics so they will have the foundational knowledge for practice. The group poster project is one of the few opportunities on the medical degree where students get to study a topic that they are interested in in greater depth.
When they become doctors, students will very likely produce posters about audits, service improvements and research that they undertake, and this project serves as a valuable introduction to the format.
On the presentation day itself, we bring three student groups together along with academics. While one group presents their poster to academics, another group presents to peers. The student groups rotate roles until all three groups have presented to academics, presented to peers or reviewed a peer’s poster. Lots of rooms are booked to facilitate this as several sessions like this need to run simultaneously to allow us to get through the 78 student groups we form, from our student cohort of 400.
Following the presentations, the academics use Canvas to provide feedback to the students. Using the peer review function in Canvas the students also provide feedback about the poster they have reviewed. This allows students to compare and reflect on the differences and similarities in feedback they have received.
Finally, we provide students with a gallery of student posters. In their small groups the students rank their top three posters. During the day we ask academics to identify the best poster they have seen. The information from students and staff is combined to short list posters for the Group Poster Project Prize. Module leads and other senior academics are then asked to rank these, and the best poster then wins the prize.