Evaluation of the teaching activity on the courses correlated with public health from the clinical medical students in Sun Yat-sen university

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the teaching activity on public health courses from clinical medical students in our university in order to provide a scientific basis for improving the curriculum design and teaching reform. Methods The Questionnaire on Teaching Evaluation in Public Health Courses, including teaching attitude, teaching content, teaching methods and teaching effectiveness was designed, and a general investigation was conducted among the clinical medical students of five-year program (840 students) and eight-year program (278 students) in these three aspects to understand students' evaluation to the course, who had finished the public health courses, including Preventive Medicine, Medical Statistics and Epidemiology (hereinafter referred to as: statistics, epidemiology, prevention) in Sun Yat-sen University. Statistical analysis was made using SPSS 13.0 software. Data analysis methods contain descriptive analysis, T-test, ANOVA, LSD, SNK, hierarchical logistic regression analysis, etc. Results The overall score of teaching evaluation is (4.04±0.60). Differences exist between the evaluation in the five-year medical students and the eight-year medical students. The P values were 0.000 (Medical Statistics), 0.269 (Epidemiology), 0.047 (Preventive Medicine). The comparison of scores among the four dimensions shows: Teaching effectiveness β' effectiveness. Conclusions Clinical Medical students' overall evaluation on the public health courses offered by this university was good. Teaching effectiveness and teaching methods still need improvement. Teaching contents are the most influential factor of overall teaching satisfaction, followed by teaching effectiveness. Key words: Clinical medical students; Public health courses; Student evaluation of teaching; Questionnaire survey