Effectiveness of Short-Term Educational Workshop Programs for Newly Appointed Medical School facuty Members: Analysis of 30 programs with 9-year experiences / 한국의학교육

ABSTRACT

The National Teacher Training Center for Health Personnel (NTTC) / Korea, administrated jointly by Seoul National University College of Medicine, is a resource to conduct programs on fundamental and applied problems in Korean medical education, to assist faculty of health professions to gain increased knowledge of the methods of teaching, educational evaluation and curriculum planning. Of varieties of educational services given for health profession faculty since its establishment in 1975, faculty development program has been one of the major activities to provide educational experiences to the faculty members to improve their teaching effectiveness by conducting workshops, seminars and conferences. A total of 30 short-term educational workshop programs, designed for newly appointed medical school faculty members were implemented during a period from 1981 to 1989, and their postworkshop questionnaires were analysed together with summary reports from convertors in view of evaluating immediate effectiveness. The number of participants was 655 from 27 out of 31 medical schools. They attended a 3-day promotional workshop under the same workshop objectives and format with a class size of no more than 30/workshop. The selection procedure was mostly relied on the recommendation through the dean's office. The workshop format was generally well accepted among the participants as a necessary mechanism for reclarification of the faculty roles in teaching-learning process, especially in professional educational programs. Teaching strategies including small group discussions and various group dynamics techniques were the integral parts of the workshop format aiming for the active participation throughout the educational activities in development of lecturing and test-item construction skills. Impeding and enhancing factors identified during the workshop were listed and recommendations to NTTC, medical schools and related organizations were made with regard to further improvement in faculty development programs.