Study of the Education and Research Quality in Basic Sciences through Internal Evaluation in two Consecutive Educational Years in MUMS

Introduction: Continuous quality promoting in education and research also validity of every university require adopting suitable mechanisms for evaluating quality and validity. Internal evaluation is one of tools that can evaluate systematically education and research status in universities to reach a standard situation. The present study with the aim of investigating research and education quality in basic sciences has been done in two consecutive academic years in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This descriptive cross- sectional study was performed in basic sciences departments in different schools of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences including: medicine, pharmacy, health, and Nasibeh nursing and midwifery during 94-95 and 95-96 Iranian academic years. At first, eight domains data of internal evaluation were collected through checklists approved  by Iran ministry of health and medical education and then the situation of groups in eight internal evaluation domains (mission and goals of the departments, courses and curriculum and non-curriculum programs, faculty members, students, learning/teaching strategies, educational facilities, theses, study opportunities and seminars, and graduates domain) were determined related to the eight standard, separated as domains in schools as well as totally in university for two consecutive academic years. Results were analyzed by SPSS with emphasis on descriptive statistics (mean and scores percent calculation). Results: The status of eight domains of basic sciences departments was relatively desirable. The calculation of the total score of the school departments showed that the score of the school of Health decreased from 66.13% to 64.21% and the school of pharmacy decreased from 69.03% to 68.13% but the score of Sari Nursing and Midwifery school and the basic sciences department of medical school increased from 66.13% to 70.05%, and 60.44% to 63.32% respectively. Results show that the maximum desirability in the university during 94-95 and 95-96 Iranian academic years were in domains of the faculty members (76.77%), and teaching/learning strategies (73.38%), respectively. Conclusion: Even though the most domains were in desirable level, but there is a long way to get progress in education quality by eliminating defects in different domains of education. Therefore, performing periodic internal evaluation can help the departments for achieving long-term goals for improving educational quality.