Student Feedback
Role of Students in Evaluation of the Curriculum
Students feedback plays an important role in the education quality improvement process. Each student provides feedback for instructors, courses/required experience, and new education initiatives.
Who reads my feedback? All student feedback reports are provided to the Course Director(s), Curriculum Deans, Director of Faculty Support, and the Curriculum Evaluation Subcommittee. All student feedback reports on instructors are sent to all of those stakeholders along with the appropriate faculty member. Additionally, at the end of the year each Department chair receives student feedback reports for all faculty in their department.
How do Course Directors use my feedback? Course Directors and instructors use student feedback to understand the student perspective, and in conjunction with other elements (peer instructor feedback, performance, etc.), decide what changes to make for future iterations of a course. The appropriate leadership also meets with individual instructors to discuss student feedback when needed.
Something to note, with class sizes over 100, sometimes only a few students will feel strongly about a particular aspect of a course, or a class may be divided in opinion. In these situations, the feedback helps course directors/instructors understand the breadth of student experiences but may not lead to an immediate change. Some aspects of a course may not make sense to students in the moment, but will when they are further along in their medical school careers. Thus, we also rely on two national surveys that all medical students complete retrospectively during year 2 (AAMC Y2 survey) and at graduation (AAMC Graduation questionnaire).
Closing the Loop New for AY2022-2023: Course Directors will be providing students a summary of course feedback and their response to the feedback. We are working to close the loop with students in years 3 & 4 about the feedback they provide.
Are student feedback surveys required to be completed? Yes, instructor and end of course surveys are required to be completed by the due date and are an important aspect of your professionalism expectations. We make every effort to keep instructor and course surveys as short as possible.