Strides in Development of Medical Education
Volume:9 Issue: 1, 2012

One of the remarkable innovations in enhancement of human forces ability especially in universities is utilization of experiments and capacities of students in the higher years of a course of study in the training of those in lower years in an updated system named Peer Assisted Learning (PAL). Current study aims to survey the perspectives of academic members and students in the Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences about the required infrastructures for implementation of Peer Assisted Learning proposed by the research group.

Following a vast literature review and interviews with experienced educational experts, the researchers designed a questionnaire about the required infrastructures for the implementation of peer assisted learning. Content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by obtaining the opinions of 10 experts and reliability was confirmed through a pilot study. A total of 289 medical students and academic members participated in the study. Data were analyzed by SPSS 16.

According to the obtained results, implementation of this system requires administration of abundant prerequisites and infrastructures that can be categorized into 5 topics of “selecting appropriate educators”, “preparing the educators for acting properly”, “creating adequate and effective motivation in educators”, “modifying educational frames and rules for administration of this system” and “planning and supervision to achieve a successful administration of the proposed system”.

Most participants were in agreement with the proposed infrastructures and the obtained results were similar to those found in previous studies and similar systems. Executive leaders in this field should notice that successful implementation of the proposed system requires numerous infrastructures.

Nowadays, improvement of teaching quality is one of the basics for a credible higher education system and without doubt evaluation and monitoring of teaching quality are important for reaching this goal. However, different studies have shown that academic evaluation is one of the most controversial topics in Medical Education and deserves more research and attention. Meanwhile, the experience of academics, as the subjects of these assessments, can be very helpful.

The current study is a qualitative (phenomenology) study. Interested academics were invited to participate in 4 focus groups, each including 6 to 8 participants. Open, unstructured questions were asked. Participants suggested different methods of academic assessment and commented on the pros and cons of each. The focus group discussions ended when the conductors felt data saturation has been met.

Data were analyzed through theme analysis method. A total of nine different data sources including seven subjective sources (asking from students, head of faculty, head of department, and colleagues as well as self-assessment, two-way assessment and assessment by a third party) and two objective ones (students’ scoring and the academics’ output) were mentioned and their pros and cons were explored thoroughly and the methods for increasing data quality from each source were also proposed.

In order to acquire more fair results, academic assessment should rather be done through an appropriate combination of different information sources and by considering the current situation and the shortcomings of each source.