The showcase story

A bit of background for those who have never heard of us

About Us

“PiPs” (peer teachers in practice) is an organisation, set up in 2017, to support healthcare juniors to develop peer teaching programmes in the North West of England. Although there may be similar endeavors elsewhere, PiPs is unique to our region. Funded by Health Education England we are a voluntary team working to build a community for people starting out on their education journey.

As time has inevitably progressed we have developed our activities from teacher training to presentation opportunities to leadership opportunities.

We value inclusivity, community, social learning, innovation and creativity.

Empowered by the summer showcase experience, I went on to design and implement a peer teaching project alongside a colleague who also attended the conference – something I didn’t have the confidence to do before.

Mishal

Clinical fellow and PiPs lead

Throughout the showcase I made notes of details from the teaching programmes being presented, which I thought were unique and quite effective…After attending, I reached out to a few of my peers and proposed we work together to create a teaching programme for final year medical students.

Hakim

Clinical fellow, North West, now PiPs lead

“(The showcase) exceeded expectations- I was dreading sitting at a computer all day but was broken up into short chunks really well and team kept enthusiasm up so was actually enjoyable”

Response from a presenter at the 2020 virtual showcase

The showcase

Since 2018 we have been offering North West healthcare professionals the opportunity to present their education projects to their peers

What we do

Teaching is core skill for many health professions, yet rarely are we supported to gain and develop the tools to do so. Teaching is a craft that takes time, work, support and experience to become effective in.

Peer assisted learning is a valuable opportunity to develop teaching and learning skills in a safe, supported and scaffolded environment. PiPs was set up to support local teams to develop peer learning programmes.

The showcase is an opportunity for learners and leaders in education from around the region to share, discuss and develop their projects and ideas.

Historically this has been at a face to face conference in the summer but in 2020 we went online with great success and this year will be also be virtual.

Get in touch!

Mim

Founder and lead trainer

Nate

Lead Trainer

Umair

Lead showcase consultant

Community

At PiPs we hold social learning as the core goal of successful peer teaching. Communities of practice describe the shared learning we try to create.

CoP

Help to develop

Since 2018 we have offered support to individuals and teams developing local projects. We have provided targeted feedback from peers and experts to help identify areas for development.

Teaching and learning

Alongside presentation opportunities we offer teaching and learning activities from advice on how to get published (2019, P Baker) to learning theory (2018, N Smith, 2021- the pips team) to feedback skills and qualitative evaluation (2020, 2021, pips team)

The number of projects we have supported has grown year on year

2018

11 projects

2019

15 – over 30 presenters

2020

20 – almost 40 individuals presenting

2021

12 – we think likely hit by the pandemic

The first showcase, 2018

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation. I’m very grateful for the detailed feedback on my project and presentation. This is the best feedback I’ve ever received and has given me a lot to work on for the future.

A, peer teaching lead, NW

Plans for the future

We are always looking to develop and innovate so if you have any ideas or suggestions for how we can do so please get in touch.

In 2021 we hope to open the showcase to our physician associate colleagues and are exploring other ways to expand who we can support with the showcase.

We are planning to develop the showcase into a scaffolded process for learner teachers to gain peripheral research skills in presentation, abstract writing, evaluation and feedback.