Quality of Research Projects in Medical Education – Does Extended Time Lead to Higher Quality?

The research projects produced in higher education are important not only for developing skills in critical appraisal in order to give students tools for working evidence-based but also as a measure of quality of higher education. When the Bologna Process was implemented at Lund University in Sweden, the courses in research projects were extended and are now performed at the basic level as well as the advanced level in the program, in the form of one bachelor thesis in the middle of the program and one master thesis at the end of the program. The aim of this study was to analyze whether the extension of the research project course in the medical program at a Swedish university had affected the quality of the research projects in the course. One teacher read all of the papers from the students on the extended 20-week course and the previous 10-week course. During the reading of the papers, scoring rubrics were used to grade the papers. A comparison between the two courses was made. The comparison showed that, in the items “title,” “abstract,” “introduction,” “ethics” and in the total sum, the projects from the long course were given statistically significantly higher grading than the projects from the short course. More projects from the long course passed the exam than the short course. We conclude that extended time seemed to improve quality of scientific writing in some of the items, but not all, and also resulted in more projects passing the exam. The item “ethics” is difficult for students to handle. (Less)