Article Sidebar
Article Details
Copyright remains in the Author’s name. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial Works License. Authors are required to complete and sign an Author Agreement form that outlines Author and Publisher rights and terms of publication. The Agreement form should be uploaded along with other submissions files and any submission will be considered incomplete without it [forthcoming].
Material submitted for publication in the AJHPE is accepted provided it has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Please inform the editorial team if the main findings of your paper have been presented at a conference and published in abstract form, to avoid copyright infringement. The AJHPE does not hold itself responsible for statements made by the authors. The corresponding author should also indicate if the research forms part of a postgraduate short report, dissertation or thesis.
Previously published images
If an image/figure has been previously published, permission to reproduce or alter it must be obtained by the authors from the original publisher and the figure legend must give full credit to the original source. This credit should be accompanied by a letter indicating that permission to reproduce the image has been granted to the author/s. This letter should be uploaded as a supplementary file during submission.Main Article Content
Assessment of the educational environment of physiotherapy students at the University of Rwanda using the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM)
Abstract
Background. Getting students’ feedback regarding their experience of their educational environment (EE) is important.
Objectives. To explore how physiotherapy students at the University of Rwanda (UR) feel about their EE.
Methods. A descriptive quantitative cross-sectional study design with a census sampling strategy involving all physiotherapy students at UR was used. The Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure was administered to 77 physiotherapy students in March 2015, to collect data that were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20 (IBM Corp., USA). The frequency distribution, mean, standard deviation and percentages were calculated, and the χ2 test was performed to assess whether responses showed significant variance according to level of study and gender. The level of significance (p-value) was set at 0.05.
Results. The overall mean score on the 50 items was 62.20%. Students’ perception of learning scored the highest, with 66.58%, followed by students’ perception of atmosphere with 65.08%, students’ perception of teachers with 61.11% and students’ academic self-perception with 57.78%. The domain of students’ social self-perception scored the least, with 56.50%. All the domains scored positively toward the EE. There was no significant difference between male and female students, or between first-, second-, third- and fourth-year students regarding their perceptions of the EE.
Conclusion. The physiotherapy students perceived UR as providing a sound EE. However, the data showed that there is a need for improvement in all five subscales of the learning environment at UR. Similar studies from other academic programmes at UR and other academic institutions in Rwanda are encouraged.
