Educational Performance of Faculty Members from the Students and Faculty Members’ Point of View in Golestan University of Medical Sciences

Educational appraisal plays a pivotal role in determining and promoting the educational quality and ensuring its continuous improvement. The performance of faculty members, characterized as the major building blocks of universities, makes significant contribution to the output of an educational system. Thus, the current study sets out to compare the results of the faculty members’ self-assessment and the students’ assessment of their educational performance in Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Iran.

This cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study was performed in academic years 2011-14 on faculty members and students at school of medicine in Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Data were collected using two questionnaires. Mean scores of educational performance were compared using the Mann-Whitney test. The Kappa and ICC agreement coefficient were used to assess the agreement between the professors and the students’ views. All statistical analyses were performed in SPSS 18 at significance of 0.05.

Overall, 191 completed questionnaires related to 49 professors were collected. In addition, 109 self-assessment questionnaires were collected from 48 faculty members. Of 191 professors, 34.6% were women, 65.4% were men, and 78.8% were assistant professors. In addition, the mean work experience was 12.3 ± 6.88 years. By comparing the highest and lowest self-assessment scores of the professors, of 191 professors, 31 (16.23%) assessed themselves with the highest score, which determined their strengths in explicit expression and full explanation of the content of the course, the perfect use of class time for educational activities, proper communication with colleagues, and responsibility for carrying out organizational tasks. Moreover, 25 (13.08%) of the professors assessed themselves with the lowest score mainly due to lack of research activities. A partially significant convergence was observed between the students and the faculty members’ assessment scores.

The convergence between the students’ ideas and that of the faculty members questions the practical value of evaluation programs and highlights the necessity to deliver the resulting outcome to the faculty members.