Abstract
BackgroundOnline medical education curricula offer new tools to teach and evaluate learners. The effect on educational outcomes of using learner feedback to guide curricular revision for online learning is unknown.MethodsIn this study, qualitative analysis of learner feedback gathered from an online curriculum was used to identify themes of learner feedback, and changes to the online curriculum in response to this feedback were tracked. Learner satisfaction and knowledge gains were then compared from before and after implementation of learner feedback.Results37,755 learners from 122 internal medicine residency training programs were studied, including 9437 postgraduate year (PGY)1 residents (24.4 % of learners), 9864 PGY2 residents (25.5 %), 9653 PGY3 residents (25.0 %), and 6605 attending physicians (17.0 %). Qualitative analysis of learner feedback on how to improve the curriculum showed that learners commented most on the overall quality of the educational content, followed by specific comments on the content. When learner feedback was incorporated into curricular revision, learner satisfaction with the instructive value of the curriculum (1 = not instructive; 5 = highly instructive) increased from 3.8 to 4.1 (p < 0.001), and knowledge gains (i.e., post test scores minus pretest scores) increased from 17.0 % to 20.2 % (p < 0.001).ConclusionsLearners give more feedback on the factual content of a curriculum than on other areas such as interactivity or website design. Incorporating learner feedback into curricular revision was associated with improved educational outcomes. Online curricula should be designed to include a mechanism for learner feedback and that feedback should be used for future curricular revision.
Highlights
Online medical education curricula offer new tools to teach and evaluate learners
We describe here learner feedback on a widely-used online curriculum on ambulatory care and evaluate associated changes in learner satisfaction and educational outcomes
Using qualitative feedback from learners as a needs assessment to guide curricular revision and website design is associated with greater learner satisfaction and larger gains in knowledge
Summary
Online medical education curricula offer new tools to teach and evaluate learners. The effect on educational outcomes of using learner feedback to guide curricular revision for online learning is unknown. Many online curricula have been developed without attention to the principles of curriculum development [3,4] This is unfortunate, because the Internet adds the capability of efficiently performing recurrent needs assessments of its learners [5]. By incorporating such assessment into design of online curricula, educators can determine whether the needs of learners have been met and gauge program effectiveness [5]. This information serves as the needs assessment for the round of curricular revision. Since a curriculum’s goals and objectives will likely evolve over time as learning needs change, these rounds of outcomes assessment, needs assessment, and curriculum revision become important to the long-term success of a curriculum [2]
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