Developing medical educators – a mixed method evaluation of a teaching education program

Abstract

Background

It is well accepted that medical faculty teaching staff require an understanding of educational theory and pedagogical methods for effective medical teaching. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 5-day teaching education program.

Methods

An open prospective interventional study using quantitative and qualitative instruments was performed, covering all four levels of the Kirkpatrick model: Evaluation of 1) ‘Reaction’ on a professional and emotional level using standardized questionnaires; 2) ‘Learning’ applying a multiple choice test; 3) ‘Behavior’ by self-, peer-, and expert assessment of teaching sessions with semistructured interviews; and 4) ‘Results’ from student evaluations.

Results

Our data indicate the success of the educational intervention at all observed levels. 1) Reaction: The participants showed a high acceptance of the instructional content. 2) Learning: There was a significant increase in knowledge (P<0.001) as deduced from a pre-post multiple-choice questionnaire, which was retained at 6 months (P<0.001). 3) Behavior: Peer-, self-, and expert-assessment indicated a transfer of learning into teaching performance. Semistructured interviews reflected a higher level of professionalism in medical teaching by the participants. 4) Results: Teaching performance ratings improved in students’ evaluations.

Conclusions

Our results demonstrate the success of a 5-day education program in embedding knowledge and skills to improve performance of medical educators. This multimethodological approach, using both qualitative and quantitative measures, may serve as a model to evaluate effectiveness of comparable interventions in other settings.

• faculty development
• medical education
• medical teacher
• educational theory
• collaborative feedback

Acknowledgements

We thank all participants and the Medical Faculty of University of Heidelberg for their contribution to this study. We thank Jelena Zwingmann who provided support in the study design. We thank Jobst-Hendrik Schultz and Andreas Möltner who provided support in some statistical analysis. Finally, we thank Sarah Berger for linguistic improvement.