Improving student-faculty feedback: a medical student perspective

Abstract

Student-to-faculty feedback is an important tool in allowing the medical school to elicit student perception of the curriculum. Our medical school, Imperial College London, uses Student Online Learning Evaluation (SOLE) for this purpose. This is an anonymised online questionnaire that asks questions based on the Likert scale with an opportunity to give specific written feedback.1 Students are invited to complete this questionnaire at different stages of the curriculum, such as after lectures, or in later years, after specific clinical placements. Although not compulsory, students are strongly encouraged to submit responses, and it is stressed that their comments will be used to shape the course in future years. Having used SOLE over many years to put forward our views regarding the curriculum, we have found that the questionnaires are too detailed, which deters students from completing them. In addition, feedback received is frequently biased: faculty tend to receive a skewed picture as SOLE is often only completed by those who have had bad experiences with the curriculum. Although these responses are taken seriously and evaluated, they are not representative of what was experienced by the cohort as a whole.