Educational Environment Perception in Last Year Medical Students at Pontificia Universidad Católica Del Ecuador a Descriptive Study

Abstract

Background: Education represents a challenge for higher education institutions: making students see the value of solving real-world problems and encouraging them to learn independently. This means creating situations such as those students might encounter in their careers. Students will be subject to an educational environment that certainly influences their perception, triggering feelings of motivation and satisfaction. Since these feelings can improve learning, it is important to understand how students perceive their educational environment, enabling universities to proactively address their needs and concerns.Methods: The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) scale is a validated tool for measuring the educational environment used in various universities. This scale provides an objective assessment of each student's individual perception. The scale was applied to 110 students who responded to the survey virtually in the first period of 2022, describing the mean, median and mode along with the total on the scales. Additionally, the SCIMAGO ranking in 2022 was used for comparative purposes among different universities worldwide.Results The consolidated scores of the subscales show that learning perception was 26.25/48 (54.68%), teacher perception was 23.15/44 (52.61%), academic self-perception was 19.6/32 (61.25%), atmosphere perception was 24.92/48 (51.91%), social self-perception was 14.91/28 (53.25%), and the total score was 108.81/200. This global score represents 54.4%, which is low compared with the scores reached from other universities in the same ranking.Conclusions The educational environment is fundamental for the development of students. At this university, there is a slightly more positive than negative perception according to the lower limits set. It is necessary to pay attention and focus efforts to correct in the three categories where a good score was not obtained: perception of teachers, atmosphere perception, and social perception.