A system for students' evaluation of lectures in the medical programme in Oslo

Students and education authorities are expressing an increasing demand for educational quality and student involvement in higher education. We present a descriptive observational study of a student-initiated system for evaluation of lectures in the medical degree programme at the University of Oslo.

Criteria-based student evaluations of 445 lectures in the first and second year of the medical degree programme were conducted in spring and autumn 2017 and spring 2018; after each lecture, three students completed a questionnaire about the lecture. The responses were sent by email to the lecturer on the same day. We performed an analysis of the evaluations, a group interview with the cohort's elected representatives, and a questionnaire survey among the lecturers who received an evaluation.

The lecturers received generally good feedback, but the student evaluations also indicated a clear potential for improvement: 21 % of the lectures were not adapted to the volume of information, 32 % did not point out the association with the learning outcomes, 31 % failed to activate the students and 40 % did not provide a summary at the end of the lecture. The cohort's elected representatives had a positive attitude to the evaluation scheme, but requested a simpler technical solution. Almost all the lecturers welcomed the student evaluation, and more than half had used the evaluations to improve their lectures.

This quality development project shows how students, teachers, administration and management can collaborate to improve the teaching.