Introduction:

In the last decade, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile has modified the curriculum of its eight health schools, with the objective to guide the educational process of the students according to their professional profiles.

Aim:

To determine the impact of curricular innovation in the perception of educational environment of the second year students of School of Medical Technology of the Faculty of Medicine.

Method:

This was a cross-sectional study. Four successive cohorts (N = 308), two of them with a former curriculum (years 2012 and 2013) and two others with an innovated curriculum (years 2014 and 2015), were surveyed with the DREEM questionnaire. This instrument was designed to measure the perception of the educational environment and consisted of 50 items, divided into 5 sub-scales: perception of teaching, teachers, learning environment, academic and social self-perception.

Results:

The overall mean scores of the questionnaire were significantly higher in students in the two years post curricular innovation (2012:116.2; 2013:117.6; 2014:131.1; 2015:133.3). In addition, in the 2014 and 2015 cohorts the percentage of students who considered the educational environment as excellent increased significantly (2012:6.6%, 2013:7.5%, 2014: 20.8%, and 2015:23.7%). In two of the five sub-scales of the DREEM questionnaire, perception of teaching and perception of the learning environment, significantly increased the positive perception in the students with innovated curriculum. No differences were detected among the 4 cohorts in the rest of the subscales.

Conclusion:

According to the students' opinion, the process of curricular innovation in the School of Medical Technology successfully corrected some deficient aspects of the former curriculum. The DREEM questionnaire gave indications about the priorities when reforming the curriculum.