Teachers' education goes through students' evaluation as well

OBJECTIVE: Students' opinion on the quality of the educational methods can represent an interesting factor useful to encourage teachers to reconsider their educational methodologies in view of the new planning required by changes in the study curricula. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The paper considers the evaluation expressed by medical students of the "Campus Bio-Medico" University during three consecutive years, in order to perceive the dynamic sense and the evolving prospective of the educational quality as a whole. From a methodological point of view the evaluation of each year and of each course are related to a general median line. This is a significant indicator of the variations of educational methodologies considered as a whole. The relation between the general median line and the course one allows taking into consideration the relative and the absolute variation of the quality. RESULTS: To be relevant the analysis of each course has to be put in relation with the progress of the previous year and with the overall state of the educational activities. While in the first case students evaluating the same course are not the same, in the second one the group of students is substantially stable and allows a better control of the evaluators' variable. CONCLUSIONS: Students' judgements on the educational quality have to be put always into a constructive frame. They have to be involved in the process of improving the educational methodologies by means of orienting teachers' education, pointing out possible critical aspects or stressing each time the results they expect. The dynamic aspect of evaluation allows constant confrontation of the results obtained during a course with the criteria of the expected quality growth. That is, a course apparently static or even dropping, can be considered as such only because the students expectations have grown.