Julie Schneider

Interteaching: An Innovative Approach to Facilitate University Student Learning in the Field of Nutrition

Interteaching is a new pedagogical strategy for classroom instruction that demonstrates greater effective student learning outcomes than the traditional lecture-based method. As developed by behavior analysts, an interteach session is a ‘‘mutually probing, mutually informing conversation between two people.’’ It is a 20to 30-minute, student-to-student discussion addressing the main points in a specified body of reading materials. The elements that interteaching includes—such as reciprocal peer tutoring, cooperative learning, and problem-based learning—have been well theorized, and their effectiveness has been empirically documented. To facilitate the peer discussions during interteach, students complete a preparation guide that focuses and organizes learning the most important themes and concepts. During an interteach session, students form pairs and discuss the questions from the preparation guide, using their answers and supplementary notes while the instructor moves from pair to pair facilitating discussions and answering questions. At the end of each interteach session, students complete an interteach record form that includes the group members’ names, the quality of their session, and the topics that they would like reviewed in lecture. Based on the feedback from students through the interteach record form, the instructor follows with ‘‘clarifying lectures.’’ Interteaching has been used in the field of psychology as an effective method of classroom instruction. Saville et al conducted studies comparing interteaching with lecture in a graduate course in special education and demonstrated that quiz and exam scores following interteaching were higher than those following lecture. Traditional lecture methods are teacher centered and offer few opportunities for active learning. Thus the authors incorporated the learner-centered interteach method to facilitate higher ordered comprehension of the nutrition material. On the other hand, to date, little is known about the effects of interteaching on student learning outcomes in nutrition courses.