Evaluation of Teaching and Learning Outcomes in Health Systems Management Studies, the Case of Israel: Ideal Versus Actual

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the evaluation of a Health Management Systems program, stressing the paradigmatic difference between the teaching-centered approach and the learning-centered approach, with an emphasis on the formulation of learning outcomes. In the current study, we examine the contribution of various academic domains and learning skills to the preparation of undergraduate research papers (final paper and seminar) that reflect the contents and skills acquired by students throughout their undergraduate studies. In addition, we examined the relationship between personal variables (gender, age, country of birth, year of immigration), family variables (marital status, number of children), and occupational variables (job in the healthcare system, numbers of years on the job, and extent of position) – and students’ satisfaction with the contents and skills they acquired. The research population consisted of 113 students of health systems management at Ariel University, who completed their undergraduate studies in 2016.

We found significant differences between critical thinking skills and taking responsibility; significant differences were also found between research capabilities and visual and verbal presentation, as well as skills of taking responsibility and learning. Furthermore, the respondents displayed relatively high satisfaction with their academic studies. Methodology and health courses were found to have a unique and significant contribution to explaining general satisfaction. The most significant finding is the high satisfaction found, as well as the high congruence between the primary domains in the curriculum and the contribution of studies to preparation of the final paper and seminar. The skills that the curriculum’s policymakers intended to develop indeed assisted the students in practice. The research results are important due to the unsettling data indicating a considerable drop in university registrations in Israel and elsewhere, with the younger generation attributing increasingly less importance to the role of universities in shaping their personal and professional future.

This case study of Ariel University, which was established in 1982 as a college and became a university in 2012, emphasizes characteristic trends among academic institutions around the world, where higher education is becoming more accessible to different populations. Ariel University is attentive to contemporary “voices” calling for more learning-centered teaching. The trend of learning-centered teaching is receiving increasing attention in the USA as well, a focus called for specifically by STEM disciplines. In the current case study, this approach to teaching is implemented in fields that have not previously done so, such as healthcare studies, which are more multidisciplinary by nature.