PEER EVALUATION AS TEACHING METHOD – GRADUATION LEARNING: THE STUDENTS’ VIEW

INTRODUCTION - OBJECTIVES: The pedagogical tool of the University of Fortaleza’s medical school is the Problem-based Learning. In order to promote professional development and teamwork, there’s a training tendency of students based on their own assessment and peer evaluation. In this paper, we identified the contribution of peer evaluation in Medical degree, focusing on the protagonist student; inherent evaluator characteristics and prior knowledge interference between students. METHODOLOGY: quantitative - qualitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study, held at UNIFOR Medical School; gathering data in July and August / 2015; stored and analyzed data on Google Drive and Excel; sample of 49 enrolled students from the fourth semester of Medical-IV Skills 2015.1. RESULTS: peer assessment during the realization of anamnesis and physical examination was considered a valid method for 97.9% of the students; when involving bad news communication, 79% considered positive. This difference is attributed to the subjective character in the evaluation of bad news. About 89.8% consider self-evaluation a learning strategy and 85.5% consider it complementary to the peer assessment; 77% think overall impressions of colleagues influence the evaluation; 75% mentioned sincerity, safety, motivation, patience, communication skills and active listening as good evaluator features; 25% mentioned experience and qualities that demand theoretical knowledge. CONCLUSION: There’s a good acceptance of peer evaluation and self-assessment for teaching and learning, considering them promising methods. However, it’s necessary make improvements and preparatory programs to conscious constructive evaluations in a safe evaluation environment. Following up assessments longitudinally, comparing them with those of professors may be relevant.