Evaluating major curriculum changes: Ensuring a psychologically safe learning environment is achieved for graduate students.

Abstract

A graduate-level master's gross anatomy course was recently rewritten to enhance delivery of its content in a manner that supports student learning. End-of-course evaluations from all 88 students showed highly favorable ratings for the curricular change, but a more detailed analysis is critical to determine whether a safe learning environment had been established. A safe learning environment is established where the curriculum is appropriately challenging, faculty are supportive, and students feel they belong. A measure of the success of a new course is typically the overall performance of the cohort, in addition to the student evaluations. One limitation of this is the use of Likert scores in student evaluations, which are universally devoid of nuanced information. In most instances, students are offered an opportunity to provide written feedback, and beyond a superficial read-through of these comments, they are not typically analyzed for more information or with purpose. An AI-based text analysis tool was used to undertake the underutilized technique of scoring the comments (sentiment data) to further investigate; the data were incorporated in this instance and highlighted several important categories that students deemed necessary to comment on, including: faculty availability, humor and knowledge, effective group dynamics, and a sense of belonging, among others. Based on the assessments of categories in the student-written feedback, a safe learning environment was achieved.