From Feedback to Reciprocity

Abstract

Reforms to medical education have refocused curricula on the need to produce primary care physicians through a problem-based, student-centered, community-oriented, and integrated approach to instruction. Course evaluations, originally designed for traditional lecturebased, teacher-centered curricula, provide inadequate inputfrom students to support curriculum planning and change and to determine appropriate mixes of educational methods. At the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, a unique community-centered course, called "Health, Illness and the Community, " developed a student-centered course evaluation to provide adequate student input to support curriculum planning and change. A 35-item evaluation was developed to obtain data to identify student concerns, student learning styles, and preferred community agency utilization. The results suggest that student-centered course evaluation can play a role in managing and identifying key relationships in integrated and systematic courses as well as establishing a method for continual improvement.

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