Medical school radiology lectures: what are determinants of lecture satisfaction?

Objective: Slideshow presentations are a popular teaching method in undergraduate medical education; however, there are scant data on determinants of lecture satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to determine which features of undergraduate medical school radiology lectures are associated with better student evaluations.

Materials and methods: All undergraduate medical school radiology presentations and student evaluations at the University of Ottawa from January to December 2013 were compiled. A standardized data extraction sheet was applied by two independent reviewers, including a 10% overlap for audit. Student evaluations were reported on a 5-point Likert scale from which an overall mean score per lecture was calculated. Correlation coefficients were calculated for continuous variables in relation to mean evaluation score. Student t tests and univariate ANOVAs were performed for categoric data. Quantitative content analysis of student comments was also undertaken.

Results: Sixty-four slideshows by 33 lecturers were analyzed. The overall mean (SD) evaluation score was 4.38 ± 0.30. The strongest positive correlation with mean evaluation score was for type size (r = 0.32; p = 0.01), whereas the strongest negative association was for number of clinical cases presented (r = -0.32; p = 0.01). No association with percentage of text slides (r = 0.19; p = 0.14) or mean number of images on an image slide (r = -0.22; p = 0.08) was identified. Content analysis revealed a moderate positive correlation between percentage of total slides containing text only and the percentage of positive comments (r = 0.31) and a weak correlation between the mean number of images per image slide and the percentage of negative comments (r = 0.24).

Conclusion: Larger type size and a higher proportion of text slides were more favored by medical students.