The National Student Survey: Is it just a bad DREEM?

Abstract

Background: In this article, we consider the need for medical schools to improve the overall experience given to students by gaining appropriate feedback and ask whether the UK National Student Survey (NSS) is an appropriate tool. Aims: We compare the currently used NSS data against data collected via an alternative, well validated, questionnaire -the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM). Methods: The DREEM data was collected in January to April 2011, from the same cohort of students who were completing the UK online NSS. The NSS results were released into the public domain as frequency tables from which we calculated the standard deviations of each item. The DREEM questionnaire data were rescaled to match the NSS questionnaire data. Results: The results were similar from each questionnaire, with a wide range of responses. Both DREEM and NSS data showed Assessment and Feedback to be the greatest problem, but the DREEM questions were specific, contextualised and could be used for curriculum development. Conclusions: This comparison shows the benefits of using a medical school-specific questionnaire to gain quality feedback in order to precisely alter elements of the course rather than relying on a generic questionnaire to gauge students' opinions.

Evaluating the educational environment of an international animal model-based wet lab course for undergraduate students

“…The overall evaluation is based on the aggregate scores, as well as the 5 subscales, and many authors include and comment on each of the 50 statements individually [1], [13]. DREEM inventory has been used to evaluate various educational environments [1], [4], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], mainly in undergraduate curricula, as well as postgraduate training [30].…”

Percepção do Estudante de Medicina acerca do Ambiente Educacional Utilizando o Dreem

“…O Dreem continua sendo um instrumento confiável 9 . Estudo realizado em Liverpool, em 2013, comparou dois instrumentos de avaliação, um genérico NSS (Pesquisa Nacional de estudantes do Reino Unido) e outro específico (Dreem), e concluiu que há benefícios na utilização de um questionário específico para estudantes de Medicina na avaliação do seu ambiente educacional 40 .…”

How can we characterize medical simulation environment as a specific type of medical environment?

“…Many authors have already been interested in studying the in uence of the educational environment on the learning process and a few scales have been developed, for example, the DREEM scale, the JHLES scale, the MSLES scale and others (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). The comparison of these tools is shown in Table 1.…”