Office of Program Evaluation, Education & Research
(PEAR)
Undergraduate Medical Education Projects
The emergence of innovative curricula in medical education has created a need to understand and evaluate how modifications in the
learning environment influence short-term outcomes in medical education and longer range outcomes as they pertain to physician
behavior, including career choice and location. In the early stages of a new curriculum or program, the evaluation tends to
be formative, descriptive and process-oriented. Over time, the outcome data are reported, providing
cross-sectional and longitudinal information.
PEAR's approaches to UME program evaluation
Six formal models of program evaluation are combined to form the theoretical basis of the approach at the School of Medicine.
Fundamentally, program evaluation enables the curriculum to improve, to involve and serve the needs of the faculty and learners and
to aid in decision making about education.
Working with the institutional leadership, PEAR has identified key issues and questions related to the principles and goals of
the curriculum. Information has been collected about students, faculty, and the curriculum (its principles, groups and committees).
Data Collection
- Students
- Characteristics, demographics (secondary data)
- Noncognitive dimensions (personality, attitudes, learning and environmental preferences surveys)
- Professional identity, specialty choice, location (interviews, case studies, surveys, secondary data)
- Cognitive behavior and performance data (GPA prior to medical school, MCAT, SPA data, block grades, clinical
rotation grades, USMLE scores, irregular progress, and surveys
- Faculty
- Attitudes and experiences with the curriculum change and its implementation (surveys, interviews, focus
groups)
- Educational efforts (secondary data)
- Standards and groups with which these data are compared
- Data from previous classes of students
- Subgroups within SOM student population
- Curricula and students at other schools
- National data
- Curriculum
- Student and faculty attitudes about curriculum
- Integration of the basic and clinical sciences; vertical integration
- Community-based learning and research projects
- Assessment of blocks, tutorials and clerkships
- Group performance data
- Evaluation Informs Curriculum
- Provide short-loop feedback--continuous improvement
- Measure curricular strengths
- Identify stresses and strains on students and faculty
- Capture unintended outcomes
- Provide long-term measures--graduates' career choices, practice sites and work in medically underserved
communities
