Abstract

Introduction: The quality of the educational environment has frequently been identified as crucial to effective learning.

Purpose: To evaluate student’s perceptions on the educational environment and to identify the effect of gender, year of study and age on students’ perceptions of their educational environment.

Method: This was a cross-sectional descriptive and analytical study, using the DREEM questionnaire, with 380 students from the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Marrakech (3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th year), during the academic year 2017- 2018.

Result: We recruited 358 students in a period of 2 weeks (from 15/01/2018 to 30/01/2018), achieving a response rate of 94.2%. There was a predominance of females (66.48%). The mean age was 22.20±2.149 years. The mean total score of DREEM was 86.5±29.194 which indicates the existence of several significant problems. Among the 50 items of the DREEM score, we noted 35 areas of concern (Score≤2), and item 3 «There is a good support system for students when they experience stress” had the lowest score. The factors associated with a poor perception of the educational environment are the female gender and the age>21 years. The wish and the recommendation of medical studies were associated to a good perception of the educational environment.

Conclusion: In this study, students perceived the educational environment as having many problems. The findings of this study were useful to identify areas in need of improvement.