Program Evaluation

Purpose

The purpose of this section is to provide an overview of the policies and procedures used to collect medical student evaluations of faculty, courses, clerkships, electives, and other educational activities. It highlights the responsibility of the David Geffen School of Medicine and individual medical students to ensure that appropriate feedback is gathered.

Overview

Collecting student evaluations of the medical school curriculum and instruction are crucial to obtaining feedback that can be used to ensure:

  • The School of Medicine gathers evidence of faculty teaching ability and shares teaching evaluations with faculty
  • Continuous quality improvement of the curriculum and instruction that is backed by empirical data
  • Compliance with LCME standards and elements
  • Deans, faculty, and staff have reliable student feedback to inform decision-making and strategic planning

Responsibility of the Educational Measurement Unit

The Educational Measurement Unit is responsible for designing and administering evaluations of courses and faculty for all four years of the medical school curriculum. The Educational Measurement Unit is tasked with implementing evaluations that are:

  • Based on sound and rigorous methods, including online surveys and in-person qualitative methods
  • Anonymous or confidential to ensure truthful and forthright feedback from students
  • Mindful of student time and commitments
  • Able to provide decision-makers and faculty data to implement continuous quality improvements

Evaluation methods will be standardized across educational components and years to allow longitudinal comparison of results. Evaluations may include one or more of the following:

  • Items required by the LCME and items that allow for benchmarking against national data sets
  • Overall rating of educational components
  • Rating of individual faculty members, instructors, or tutors
  • Open-ended questions

Responsibility of Students

Students are required to complete course, teaching, and site evaluations at all UCLA locations. Confidential online evaluations are distributed to students via email and must be completed in a timely fashion. Students may additionally be required to participate in confidential focus groups or other in-person feedback sessions. Students are asked to provide evaluations and feedback on:

  • Pre-clerkship courses, clerkship rotations, assigned sites, electives, and other educational activities
  • Faculty, instructors, and tutors responsible for all of the above educational activities

Failure to comply with the school’s policy may result in a professionalism concern being placed on the student’s permanent record.