3.6. Evaluation and feedback
Evaluation of curriculum presents the final stage inside cyclic process of improvement and development of curriculum.
Without evaluation procedure it would be hard to imagine monitoring of institution progress toward desired needs. This process is necessary to provide the evidences that institution made a step in the right direction, as well as useful information to stakeholders. It helps in the process of identification of problems inside curriculum and institution, solving of problems and redesigning of certain aspects of curriculum. Evaluation can be performed as short-term and long-term evaluation. Short-term evaluation has a role of “friendly” criticism, while the long term evaluation is a crucial one, with much deeper impact. Department for quality assurance is usually in charge for conducting of such procedures and it is up to them to decide about many aspects of this process.
Evaluation of curriculum can be made through evaluation of many different aspects as:
- Psychological and interpersonal skill
- Continuing learning
- Professional satisfaction
- Practice behavior
- Educational achievement and cognitive development
- Institutional issues
- Student passing rates
- Making of clinical mistakes
- Clinical problem solving
- Educational cost per student
- Cost efficiency of graduates as practitioners
It is very important to carefully define the appropriate time for evaluation for each of these areas as well as the methods for its measuring. Evaluation will only have full meaning if it is followed by action in order to improve areas which are estimated as weak points of curriculum. This action is obligatory for relevant bodies and management structures and should be described precisely inside document policy agreement.