In-Class Prep Guide Completion in a Classroom Study of Interteaching

Interteaching is a robust, active pedagogy that results in increased student learning outcomes in comparison with passive, lecture-based methods. Interteaching involves students completing a preparation guide, a set of questions that guide them through a reading, prior to class and discussing those questions in small groups in class. The current study examined whether modifications to the preparation guide and group discussion influenced student exam scores in a face-to-face classroom setting. Specifically, it compared traditional interteaching with a version where students completed a portion of the preparation guide questions as part of the in-class group discussion. No differences in exam scores were found; however, students reported a stronger preference for the modified version of interteaching. Previous research has found that differences in the implementation of the components in the interteaching package tend to not influence the overall efficacy of this teaching methodology (Hurtado-Parrado et al., in J Behav Educ 31: 157-185, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-021-09452-3). These results provide further evidence of the flexibility in the application of the various components of interteaching.