The Educational Environment Is Warming Up: Response to Changes in a Component of a Medical Curriculum

Katherine Miles; Abdel-Ellah Al-Shudifat; Mustafa Saad Yousuf

doi:10.1007/s40670-021-01359-y

The Educational Environment Is Warming Up: Response to Changes in a Component of a Medical Curriculum

Med Sci Educ. 2021 Jul 30;31(5):1677-1684. doi: 10.1007/s40670-021-01359-y. eCollection 2021 Oct.

Authors

Katherine Miles¹, Abdel-Ellah Al-Shudifat¹, Mustafa Saad Yousuf¹

Affiliation

¹ Faculty of Medicine, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan.

Abstract

Introduction: The Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) is a valid instrument to evaluate the educational environment of institutions. This quantitative study aimed to discover if applying interactive educational approaches to a component of a traditionally taught medical curriculum improved the educational environment, as measured by the DREEM.

Methods: The bilingual Arabic-English DREEM questionnaire was distributed twice to all third-year medical students (273 students) at the Hashemite University in Jordan. The first data collection occurred at the completion of a traditionally taught component of the Neurology module and the second data collection at the end of an interactively taught component of the same module. A paired t-test was used to compare the results.

Results: The total DREEM score for the innovative interactive course was 120.04/200 (from 183 questionnaires) and for the traditionally taught course was 114.69/200 (from 198 questionnaires). Of the five DREEM sub-scales, the interactive course scored statistically significantly higher than the traditionally taught course for "perceptions of learning" and "perceptions of atmosphere" (p-value 0.013 and 0.011, respectively). The interactively taught course was particularly valued by students for being participative, student-centered, and developing their professional competence. The lowest scoring item for both courses was "there is a good support system for students who get stressed."

Discussion: This study demonstrated that students value interactive learning environments and that there is benefit in introducing these components to a traditionally taught medical curriculum, when it may not be feasible to bring innovation to the entire medical curriculum due to resource constraints.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-021-01359-y.

Keywords: DREEM questionnaire; Educational environment; Medical education; Student perceptions.