Evaluation of the Course Syllabus and Its Comparison with Faculty Expertise in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (2017)

Dear Editor,

An educational institution mainly deals with three concepts: relevance (adjusting instructors’ knowledge, attitude, and skill according to the community needs), equity (the equal distribution of educational services to all community groups), and quality (professionally acceptable level quantitatively and qualitatively). Analyzing the views of the students and providing feedback to the institution have an important role in improving the quality of education. Curriculum planning and instructional design in a regular manner in medical universities are also no exceptions to this rule (1).

Tailoring the syllabus as per the graduation needs is the main pillar of the educational system. There is a significant relationship between effective syllabi and well - qualified graduations (2).

A comparative survey of the professional medical education system regarding the educational rules and regulations, instructions, and standards of evaluation and accreditation will explore the issues of the medical education system. Although the course and faculty expertise are well - matched in most of the cases, it is necessary to improve the planning of the courses that do not match the faculty expertise (3).

One of the most important missions of the medical universities is to have the courses taught by specialist professors in the related field. Accordingly, an appropriate plan to allocate profession - related courses to faculty members could improve the teaching - learning process (4).

According to our experience, due to the diversity of the medical sciences and presence of faculty members specialized in varied disciplines, a revision of the planning for allocating the course according to the faculty expertise is required. This process would lead to promoting the graduate performance and, ultimately, meet the community health needs.

Our experiences provide some evidence which shows that the course taken by a faculty member may not be related to his/her specialty. Therefore, we decided to revise the course instructors according to their profession in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS). For this purpose, Kermanshah Educational Development Center (EDC) took responsibility for the revision of the course instructors. Six rounds of meeting were held by the planning committee in the presence of the head of Kermanshah EDC, head of the departments, related instructors and faculties, and planning committee members.

Of all 372 courses in the autumn semester of 2017, 32 courses were selected after an overall expert pre - revision for matching the faculty expertise to the course syllabus. All course syllabi and their instructors were carefully studied, and discussions about choosing the relevant department and faculty for the selected courses were continued by the committee members until final consensus was reached. Finally, 28 out of the 34 instructors were recognized to be relatively lacking the expertise required for certain courses. The committee recommended that the selected courses be shared with a more related department. The revision of the 28 courses was then approved at the Education Council of KUMS and sent to be followed by the schools. After the autumn semester, two classes were assessed by a standard satisfaction questionnaire. Sixty - three percent of students were satisfied and strongly satisfied with the course teaching by the two departments. Further evaluation may be needed to detect and track the learning, academic performance, and some psychologic factors that affect learning over several semesters.