VP&S Student Completion of Course and Curricular Evaluations Policy

Overview/Rationale

VP&S uses multiple sources of feedback to monitor and improve the quality of the Columbia curriculum. Student evaluations of course and curricular activities are an essential part of this process, along with input from faculty, administrators and published best practices in education.

Accreditation Standards

LCME Accreditation Standard 8.5: Medical Student Feedback

Stakeholders

Students, course directors, teaching faculty

Policy

(Includes definitions and policy)

Students are required to complete all assigned course, faculty and annual curricular evaluations. Students are expected to share evaluation feedback in a professional, constructive manner. With regard to evaluation data both within and across phases, the Office of Medical Education, the Center for Education Research and Evaluation (CERE), course and section directors, and the curriculum subcommittees (which include student representatives) review the confidential course evaluation data/reports on an ongoing basis, including in advance of annual course continuous quality improvement (CQI) meetings. Data are also used for individual faculty promotion reviews, for course improvement efforts, and for curricular improvement efforts. Summaries of changes in courses and curricular settings are shared as part of the “You asked, we heard” update meetings to students.

Procedures

Curricular Evaluations:

Student evaluations of the curriculum overall are completed on an annual basis each Spring through the VP&S Survey administered via Qualtrics. To ensure a robust response rate, the evaluation is open for at least one month and students are strongly encouraged to complete this evaluation within the specified time frame, receiving periodic reminders to do so. Student responses to this annual evaluation are kept confidential by the Center for Education Research and Evaluation (CERE).

Course Evaluations:

Student evaluations of courses are managed using OASIS, a platform through which students receive evaluation notifications by email and in their OASIS evaluation queue. All evaluation reports available to course directors and administrators created by OASIS and CERE are not connected to identifying information about students and are confidential.

Fundamentals:

Students complete course evaluations at the end of each course and/or section; evaluations are open at the end of a block/course and are due within 7 days of the final exams being due. Selected courses also require students to complete mid-semester evaluations.
Students also complete evaluations of faculty at variable intervals, depending upon the course and/or section, as part of the course evaluation process. Lecture evaluations are assigned to subgroups of students to minimize student evaluation burden. Students are expected to complete all of these assigned evaluations as well.
Course directors review the confidential results of end-of-course evaluations after exam scores/ grades are submitted. Mid-point course evaluations are used in some courses for continuous quality improvement purposes, and course directors review these during the course.

Major Clinical Year:

Students complete clerkship evaluations at the end of each clerkship, and evaluations are due within 14 days. Clerkship directors can only review the confidential evaluations after they have submitted final clerkship grades. This is referred to as the evaluation quarantine.
After the evaluation quarantine ends, clerkship directors may access confidential evaluations directly through OASIS.
Other modes of sharing feedback are also available to students. Please note that while student feedback submitted through OASIS evaluations is systematically de-identified and quarantined, at times students provide feedback to clerkship directors through other methods (e.g., email, "exit interviews," paper evaluations) which do not have the same guarantee of being de-identified or quarantined.

Differentiation and Integration:

Students complete evaluations of elective experiences on a monthly basis using OASIS. Evaluation emails are sent to students at the end of the elective period or month and are due within two weeks of the elective ending. Students will answer evaluation questions specific to clinical and non-clinical electives, away electives, Scholarly Projects, or the Ready-for-Residency course depending on the elective experience in which they are enrolled for the month.
To protect student confidentiality, faculty are able to review confidential, aggregated evaluation results of electives (including up to three years in one report) only after the release of match results for the graduating class and only if there is more than one evaluation completed in the past three years and a total of three or more students enrolled.

Data Tracking/Monitoring: The Center for Education Research and Evaluation and the Office of Education are able to monitor student completion of evaluations in order to send reminders to students and to track completion for professionalism monitoring purposes. Students’ evaluation completion history is available to view by students in OASIS. Student completion data will be shared with students and coaches. Students who fail to complete at least 80% of assigned evaluations will be discussed at the student competency committee who will make a recommendation to the Student Progress Review Committee for lapses in professionalism. The Student Progress Review Committee may deem the issue significant enough to be reported in the MSPE.

Policy History/ Approval Date:

The policy on student completion of course and curricular evaluations was taken from print-version student handbooks and online formats.  These documents were reformatted and codified into policy where specific procedures and edits were added.  The policy history is outlined below:

Approved by Curriculum and Education Policy Committee 6/28/13
Updated for Oasis 7/29/14