Evaluating Medical Students’ Perceptions of the Educational Environment at the National Defense University of Malaysia

Abstract

The National Defence University of Malaysia offers a unique medical curriculum, which combines medical syllabus and military training. Medical student’s perception on educational environment offers further insights into students learning needs and improvement of the medical curriculum. This study is to determine the perceptions of the NDUM medical students towards their educational environment. This is a cross sectional study. The Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (Dreem) inventory was distributed to 189 students during the 2015-2016 academic years. The inventory consists of 50 items; scored on a 0-4 likert scale. It has five subdomains including students’ perceptions of: learning, teaching, atmosphere, academic self-perceptions, and social self-perceptions with maximum scores of 200. The response rate was 79.1% (cadets (73.08%) vs civilian (26.92%). The total DREEM score was 138.16/200 (69.3%). Students’ perceptions of: learning, teachers, academic self-perceptions, atmosphere and social self-perceptions scores were 33.34/48(69.4%), 32.6/44(74%), 22.17/32(69.2%), 32.68/48(68%) and 18.02/28(64.3%) respectively. The highest score was “The teachers are knowledgeable” (3.75). The lowest score was “The teaching overemphasizes factual learning” (1.31). Students most preferred learning method was study group (84.1%) while the least preferred learning method was e-learning (12.1%).Medical students in this university have positive perceptions with their educational environment. Some low scoring areas indicate that the learning environment need to be improved. This information may assist the faculty in strategic planning of medical curriculum and sustaining a high quality educational environment for the students. Further research on educational environment is vital in ensuring continuous quality in the academic curriculum.