Abstract:

Background and Aim:
Educational environment is an environment of an institution perceived by students. It has an important role in motivating students. It influences how, why and what students learn, determines the overall quality of students' learning process and success in school, so it is highly connected with the success of the institutional curriculum itself. Thus we decided to investigate the operational components in the educational environment in order to determine students' perception of teaching, school organisation, atmosphere in classes or teachers' attitudes to students.

Method and Respondents:
We used the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM), which is a valid instrument for educational environment assessment from students’ point of view. DREEM is a 50 item questionnaire that contains five subscales which include: students' perception of teaching, teachers, and atmosphere; and students' academic and social self-perceptions as well. In Croatia, the DREEM questionnaire hasn't been used to evaluate educational environment in medical schools. The study population included randomly selected students from first to sixth year of School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, in order to assess differences between them based on experience and perception of education environment. The DREEM questionnaire was available in an online format and was distributed to the students through social networking, including anonymity, with a short written explanation of the importance of their participation.

Results:
Regarding to perception of teaching, mean for preclinical years is 22.47+/-10.10, and for clinical is 17.84 +/- 8.37. The lowest mean is found for 6th year which is 15.85+/-7.94. For perception of teachers mean of preclinical years is 26.50 +/- 8.10, clinical 26.44 +/-7.12, and the lowest mean is in the 6th year, 21.55+/- 6.72. Mean of preclinical years for perception of atmosphere is 28.13+/- 9.04, clinical years 27.35+/- 7.94, and the lowest mean is again for the 6th year, 24.24+/-7.63.
The results in our country are more positive than negative. The positive and important result is that the perception of teachers is 'Moving in the right direction'. And also the perception of atmosphere is 'A more positive attitude'. What is considered more negatively is academic self-perception which is considered as 'Many negative aspects', social self-perception, which is considered as 'Not a nice place' and perception of teaching as 'Teaching is viewed negatively'. The lowest Cronbach's alpha was for students' social self-perception.

Conclusion:
The students showed most interest in first years of medical school and as the years passed the perception of the medical school learning environment worsened. The lowest result in subscales perception of teachers, teaching and atmosphere was for the sixth year. Understanding students' educational environment and problem targeting can be used to improve the environment and those implemented changes should be evaluated over time. Proper problem targeting and evaluation of those implemented changes is very important because within health professional education, students' educational environment surely has an impact on educational outcomes and success.

Keywords:

Educational environment, DREEM questionnaire, medical education, students’ perception.