ABSTRACT
The most important mission of a university is training students for their job roles.. Owing to the urgent need for general education of students, and curriculum overload during ordinary semesters, particularly at medical schools, it is necessary to plan some intensive courses to present the required topics to students. In this connection, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate the success rate of Shiraz first interdisciplinary summer school in achieving its educational objectives. The topics were divided into four general categories: medical education, medical ethics, management, and creativity with some subcategories for each topic. Totally, there were 83 specific topics discussed. 50 hours were devoted to the medical education topics, 26 hours to ethics, 24 hours to management and 10 hours to creativity. Different teaching methods such as lecturing, small group, problem-based learning were employed. A 360 degree assessment (multisource feedback) was used for assessing the students’ viewpoints, lecturers, and EDC (Education Development Center) faculty members. The rate of achieving the objectives was evaluated through a final test, submission of a project, supervision of group activities and the students’ self-assessment. A total of 63 students from 13 universities in Iran participated in this program. Regarding the education sufficiency, the students ranked medical education first, followed by creativity, management and medical ethics, respectively. The results of 360 degree assessment showed that more than 90% of the participants evaluated the program as very good or excellent. In addition, in an overall evaluation of the program in which the participants rated the program from zero to twenty, the mean was found to be 18.97 with a standard deviation of 1.18. Due to the magnitude of new developments in the world and the efficacy of this program, similar programs are recommended. It is now necessary that (EDC’s) all over the country employ experienced manpower and required resources.