Feedback Value: A Cross Sectional Study on Clinical Students Perception in South East, Nigeria

Introduction: Feedback is vital for clinical students to improve their learning, growth, and raise self-awareness of their clinical skills. It also provides an important vista for faculty members to appraise their teaching practices for quality assurance process. Therefore, it is vital to assess the students' perspectives of feedback on teaching quality. Regular feedback, maybe helpful in improving teaching skills, encourage better performance, aid provision of deeper understanding of the material taught by the teacher, while eliciting better appreciation of the teaching of the faculty by students. This study probed the student’s perception of teaching evaluation feedback, awareness of teaching feedback methods and relevance of teaching feedback.

Method: A cross sectional study, carried out among clinical students in 5th year medicine purposefully selected from medical schools in South East Nigeria. A 45 item structured questionnaire consisting of Likert –scale questions and multiple choice questions was used to obtain socio-demographic and relevant data (awareness of teaching feedback, perception of feedback and awareness of other evaluation methods). Data was analyzed using SPSS version 26 to calculate descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation). Inferential statistics (t-test, regression analysis) was carried out to determine relationship between feedback and teaching quality.

Results: Most (93.2%) of the 370 respondents, were aged between 20 and 29 years, with a mean of 25.08 ± 3.18. Male participants were (53%) and females (47%). Of all the respondents, 74.3% were aware of the use of feedback as a factor of teacher evaluation; 24.1% indicated that they provide feedback in their schools. Students that were aware of other teacher evaluation systems were 43 (11.6%). Of the 43, 39(90.7%) mentioned student achievement measures, 3 (7%) on‑the‑job evaluation, 1 (2.3%) Marzano model. The very high mean response values greater than the Likert scale’s criterions mean of 3, a standard deviation value very close to the mean, indicate low response variability; shows that students agree that feedback is very important for all relevant attributes of a clinical teacher.

Students strongly agree that feedback will improve preparedness, teaching skills, teacher’s insight into the unique challenges experienced by them, performance in examinations, development of appropriate curriculum, marking schemes for examinations and overall image of the school. This is indicated by mean response values greater than the criterion mean of 3. However, students disagree that feedback may discourage interest in teaching as indicated by a mean response value of 2.94 less than the criterion mean of 3.

Conclusion: Students perceive feedback relevant for a clinical teacher, agreeing that it will help teacher understanding of their unique challenges and curriculum development. Despite the perceived benefits of feedback, only a small number of study subjects indicate that it is provided in their schools. It is imperative that feedback as a way of improving teaching/learning in schools is strengthened.