| Abstract/Notes |
Introduction: The curriculum is a living entity that generates and establishes educational environments and how students, or faculty, experience their educational environment can be called climate. As climate strongly affects student achievement, satisfaction, and success, it is important to assess the climate of the institution on a regular basis in order to nurture areas of excellence and improve areas needing attention. Of particular concern to us was the question of how our first year students experienced the educational environment at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC). This study was designed to measure the perception of climate of our 1st year students in order to determine what they were expecting the educational climate to be, to measure the dissonance between what they expected to experience and what they were actually experiencing; and to ascertain whether this student feedback could provide information that could be used for institutional planning and resource utilization.
Methods: The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) Inventory was used in this study. The DREEM is a validated inventory that has been used in various countries around the world to assess the educational climate of health professional schools. The DREEM has 50 items scored on a Likert scale between 0 and 4 and measures student perception within 5 domains, including learning, teachers, academic self-perceptions; atmosphere and social self- perceptions. The DREEM was administered to the first year students during orientation week. At that time they were requested to complete the inventory with respect to their expectations of the educational environment (expected mode). They were again surveyed in 6 months later regarding their actual experience of the educational environment (Actual mode). Differences between expected and actual responses were calculated and used to generate a list of student concerns.
Results: Two cohorts of students participated in the study with a total of 239 students completing the inventory in the Expected mode and 257 in the Actual mode. Statistically significant differences were found between the Expected and Actual responses and dissonance was obtained by subtracting the Actual values from the Expected values. Ranking of the dissonance from largest to smallest dissonance showed remarkable similarities between the two cohorts. Analysis of the results indicated 9 common items with a large dissonance between what the students expected the educational environment to be like and what they actually experienced. A closer look at the items with large dissonance indicated, for example, that the timetable was perceived to be a problem, and that the students were stressed and too tired to enjoy the program. They also indicated problems regarding teaching, which was perceived as not always being stimulating or student-centered enough. In addition, the time allocated for teaching was seen as not always being put to good use and they had problems seeing the relevance of some of the material. They indicated that they would like more feedback from the lecturers and that long-term learning should be emphasized more.
Conclusion: Based on the clear message from our first year students, it was possible to use the items identified as a basis from which to develop both short-term and long-term strategic plans in order to enhance the educational climate for our students. This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. |
