Abstract:

Physics in Medical Imaging and Radiotherapy course is lectured to the first-year students of Medical Imaging and Radiotherapy Degree. This curricular unit was firstly implemented in curricular year 2015-2016 and reformulated in 2022-2023, to address the students’ evaluation along the previous years, referring the necessity to apply the theoretical contents in a practical context. Therefore, to complement the theoretical-practical (TP) component, a practical (P) component was added to the curricular unit, and, in this scope, the teachers applied to the Transformation Program of Curricular Units promoted by the University.

A reflection about the structure, objectives, evaluation and pedagogical activities was carried out. This reflection made possible to detect vague, poorly defined learning objectives and improve their content and specificity to include scientific skills and soft skills. Evaluation was adapted to the new curricular unit configuration, addressing the learning objectives of TP and P components, and consisted in two TP tests, a group work and three practical activities. Additionally, a survey concerning the teamwork capability (soft skills) had to be filled by every group member, which had 22 validated answers in a universe of 35 students, within which 5 did not participate in the classes nor in evaluation moments.

The evaluation of the curricular unit modifications was done through two distinct surveys: the initial, an open-ended "STOP, START, CARRY ON" format, was completed by a group of 25 students. The responses from this survey were subjected to an analysis using the WebQDA qualitative analysis software, which identified primary codes via an inductive coding approach. The second survey employed a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree.' This survey was divided into two sections: the first one consisted of eight items, based on the learning objectives. Each question in this part was structured with two sets of responses: before and after participating in the course. This design was intended to capture changes in student perceptions and learning outcomes over the duration of the discipline. The second part contained 12 items, derived from the codes identified in the qualitative analysis from the initial survey. In total, 22 validated responses were examined using descriptive statistical analysis methods.

The results of the survey show that the students recognize the improvement of their knowledge about imaging modalities and radiotherapy along the curricular unit, in the various considered objectives. The results are less marked in the soft skills goals. Concerning pedagogical activities, they valued the ones in which their participation is required since its favors attention and mobilizes efforts to perform correctly.

Regarding the degree of fulfilling the learning objectives, for example, the students were able to describe the physical principles and equipment used in radiotherapy and brachytherapy with success between ~55% and ~70%.

More detailed survey results will be presented, considering the specific goals, and a complete analysis of the success of students’ evaluation (for each learning objective) will be shown. A reflection regarding this modification process, additional relevant changes and conclusions will be presented, with a proposal for future work.

Keywords:

Physics in Medical imaging and radiotherapy, curricular unit transformation, healthcare education.