Unlike

simulation, the peer-assisted learning model does not require additional equipment and therefore may be more economically viable for health services and education providers. The results demonstrate that students were not concerned by delivering feedback to a peer or receiving it from a peer, but placed higher value on the feedback delivered by the clinical educator. This finding of learners attributing more value to feedback provided see more by experts compared with feedback from peers is consistent with feedback studies in higher education.26 If peer-assisted learning tasks could be made more valuable for students, this might play an important role in shifting the traditional view of supervision and feedback from one being led solely by the clinical educator, to one that is also shared among learners. Physiotherapy clinical educators have previously reported that time spent directly teaching students is burdensome,27 and that having students in the workplace takes time away from non-clinical tasks such as administration and quality assurance activities.28 Peer-assisted learning works on Gamma-secretase inhibitor the assumption that learners are intrinsically motivated, can act in a collaborative manner and do not require the clinical educator to direct all of their

learning.19 This notion of reduced reliance on the clinical educator was demonstrated in the results where, in the peer-assisted learning model, clinical educators spent significantly less time on direct teaching and more time on non-student-related quality assurance activities. Interestingly, the reduction in the burden of direct teaching did not lead to greater satisfaction with the peer-assisted learning model. This may be because the introduction of the peer-assisted learning model represented a change in ideology and practice, and may have challenged clinical

educators’ traditional and more familiar practices. A previous study reported that peer learning processes challenge expectations of the educator’s roles and responsibilities, and require a different understanding of ways to approach teaching and learning.19 This may also explain why, despite those there being no difference in the average number of patients seen or the student performance outcomes, clinical educators reported less satisfaction with the time available for client service and their ability to observe and gauge students’ clinical abilities in the peer-assisted learning model. The implementation of the peer-assisted learning model as part of a research trial also involved additional data collection and administration, which may have added to the burden for both educators and students and contributed to dissatisfaction. The data collection was required for the outcomes of the trial, but would not be part of usual practice when implementing a peer-assisted learning model.