SSC5 teaching module

SSC5 teaching module

Assist with the review of student peer-assessment grades and anonymous feedback

Overview of SSC5

All MBChB Year 5 students undertake a SSC5 Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) project in which they work with colleagues to plan and deliver a discrete piece of teaching to student near-peers in the medical school, or to an external outreach group.

Following completion of projects, students submit individual reports reflecting on what they learned from their SSC5 PAL project teaching experience and how this might be applied to their future teaching practice.  Students then provide a peer-assessment grade and short paragraph of anonymous feedback for three other SSC5 reflective reports.

The role of the Staff Moderator is to review student peer-assessment of SSC5 reflective reports to ensure that assessment criteria have been applied correctly, that feedback language is appropriate and to finally identify any reports that need additional moderation.

Student SSC5 reflective report

Students are asked to write an individual 1000-word reflective report reflecting on what they learned from their teaching experiences during their SSC5 PAL teaching projects and how they might apply the lessons learned to their own future learning and teaching practice. Guidelines for writing the report are provided in: ‘Writing the SSC5 Reflective Report’ on the 2025-26 student Selected Component 5 (SSC5) Teaching Module LEARN pages (https://www.learn.ed.ac.uk/ultra/courses/_123386_1/outline) (requires LEARN log-in).

Student peer assessment

Following submission of individual Reflective Reports, students are asked to provide a peer-assessment grade on a two-point scale (pass/unsatisfactory) and a short paragraph of anonymous feedback for three other SSC5 reflective reports, such that each report will be independently peer-assessed three times.  Assessment guidelines will be provided to both Student Peer-Assessors and Staff Moderators.

Staff moderation

Staff moderators will review student peer-assessment grades and anonymous feedback to determine if assessment criteria have been applied correctly and to identify any inappropriate feedback comments.  Staff moderators will then either confirm or amend the final grade assessments, which would usually be the consensus of three student peer-assessments.  Where student peer-assessments fail to agree or are judged excessively generous or punitive, Staff Moderators should make their own assessment.

Where the staff moderator is unable to make an assessment or there is evidence of inappropriate feedback or other issues such as plagiarism or unacknowledged use of ChatGPT, Staff Moderators should refer the report via the MTO MBChB Year 5 Administrator to the SSC5 Module Organiser Dr Steve Morley and the SSC5 arbitration panel for a second opinion.

Reports will be distributed for moderation by the Year 5 Assessment team in week beginning Mon 30th Mar, with review to be completed by Fri 10th Apr.  Staff Moderators might normally expect to receive around 8-10 reports for review.  Anyone who has previously acted as a Staff Moderator should note that we have retained the simplified assessment criteria for 2025-26, which has resulted in a simpler and quicker assessment process.

Student Peer-assessment and staff moderation will be online via a bespoke SSC5 report PebblePad workspace, for which instruction will be provided.  We estimate that initial familiarisation with the PebblePad workspace should take a maximum of 15-20 mins, while moderation of individual student peer-assessed reports should take 5-10 mins, the rule of thumb being that if report assessment is taking longer, it should be referred to the SSC5 Module Organiser and arbitration panel.

If you are able to help with moderation of SSC5 reflective reports, please register your interest with the MTO MBChB Year 5 Administrator at MBChB.Year5@ed.ac.uk who will reply to you to arrange your registration.  Please ensure that your email is sent from either a University of Edinburgh or an NHS e-mail address (and not from a personal email address) which is needed to register your access to the relevant pages in LEARN and PebblePad.

We look forward to signing up as many CME/CEP colleagues as possible to spread the workload, but please only consider volunteering to act as a Staff Moderator only if you are certain that you can complete review of reports between Mon 30th Mar-Fri 10th April.  Meeting this deadline is essential to allow us to meet the formal UoE three-week feedback turnaround requirement.

Timeline for report submission and assessment

Fri 13th Mar 2026: Final student reflective report submission deadline
Mon 16th-Fri 27th Mar 2026: Student peer-assessment and final submission deadline
Mon 30th Mar-Fri 10th Apr 2026: Review by staff moderators and arbitration
Mon 13th-Fri 17th Apr 2026: Final arbitration by Module Organisers

Further information on the SSC5 Teaching Module and the type of projects undertaken by students can be found on the Student Selected Component 5 (SSC5) Teaching Module LEARN pages at:
(https://www.learn.ed.ac.uk/ultra/courses/_123386_1/outline)
(requires LEARN log-in).

If you don’t already have access to the MBChB programme pages on LEARN, you can register as UoE visitor using the MBChB Visitor Registration Request Form (https://mto.med.ed.ac.uk/staff-and-students/access-requests/)

Contacts

MTO MBChB Year 5 Administrator
Email: MBChB.Year5@ed.ac.uk

Dr Steve Morley
MBChB5 SSC5 Teaching Module Organiser
Email: Steve.Morley@ed.ac.uk