Abstract:

Background: Student opinions play an important role in the quality improvement efforts of higher education. Evaluation of the education involves evaluation of students, teachers, as well as the program. Atatürk University School of Pharmacy decided to take regular student opinions in the effort of continuous quality improvement process. The aim of this study is to take student opinions in order to evaluate and improve the program. Methods: A questionnaire study was conducted in the context of the program evaluation activities. The questionnaire included sixopen-ended questions evaluating the management, student affairs, canteen, library, academic staff, and physical conditions of the school in addition to seven Likert style questions (1=very bad, 5=excellent). Data was analyzed with computer using the SPSS software. Comparisons were done with the independent samples t test and one-way ANOVA. Open-ended questions were read and categorized under similar headings. Results: Out of 321 registered students for the 2013-2014 teaching period from the classes 1 thru 5, 294 (91.6%) responded to the questionnaire. Of the participants 168 were girls (61.0%) and 107 (38.9%) boys. 31 academic staff members were with a total of 2967 evaluations. Mean (±SD) evaluation scores were calculated as 3.75±1.07. all questions had a mean score of above 3.5 (very good). Highest mean scores were received from the item “Scientific competency” while lowest mean scores were received from the item “Using different educational materials during teaching”. Conclusions: Student opinions were taken with a high participation rate in order to evaluate the school from different perspectives. The evaluation revealed that students are highly satisfied from the education. Consideration of the study findings by all faculty members and aiming better results from the next student survey will be helpful in improving the teaching quality.

Keywords: