Perceptions of Educational Environment among Undergraduate Medical Students in a Tertiary Institution in South-East Nigeria
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Abstract
Background: Educational environment involves all learning activities between students and teachers including physical facilities in the institutions. Objectives: This study aimed at assessing the medical students' perceptions of their learning environment at Ebonyi State University Abakaliki, Nigeria with a view to improving the quality of medical education. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study among 344 medical students from the second to the sixth year selected by stratified sampling method. Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measures (DREEM) inventory which is composed of five domains was applied to assess the various aspects of the effective educational environment. Statistical analyses (proportions and mean score percentages) were carried out using IBM-SPSS version 25 software. Results: One hundred and eighty-three (53.2%) were male respondents and 161 (46.8%) were female respondents. The mean age was 22.4 ± 2.9 years with 67(19.5%) students in second year, 95(27.6%) in the third year, 65(18.9%) in the fourth year, 51(14.8%) in the fifth year and 66(19.2%) in the sixth year. The mean global perception in our study was 102.4/200 points (51.2%). Scores for students' academic self-perception (SASP), student's perception of learning (SPL), and students' social self-perception (SSSP) were 20.7/32 (64.6%), 27.7/48 (57.8%), 16.6/28 (51.8%) respectively. Two key areas needed attention: students' perception of course organizers (SPCO) and student's perception of the atmosphere (SPA) which were 20.9/44 (47.6%) and 16.4/48 (34.2%) respectively. Conclusion: Improvement is needed in some aspects of teaching and atmosphere. This will further be of benefit to medical students and their training as well as performance.
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