The extent of compliance with principles of designing and implementing educational workshops

Introduction: Continuing education of human resources is an integral part of medical universities’ tasks to offer desirable services and meet the society’s needs which is achieved through various ways including workshops. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent of compliance with principles of designing and implementing educational workshops by the vice chancellor for health of Arak University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed in 2014. The population and sample consisted of in-service all of educational workshops for the staff of the vice chancellor for health of Arak University of Medical Sciences which were calculated at 28 workshops Data collection tool was a researcher-made checklist whose validity and reliability had been confirmed. Also, a survey questionnaire was randomly distributed among 20 learners in each workshop leading to a total number of 560 learners. Data were analyzed by central tendency and dispersion indices. Results: The mean score of design was at a desirable level (78.18±9.07 out of 100), while that of implementation was average (60.47±7.72). The highest score of design was related to content-goal compatibility (4.71±0.76 out of 5), while the lowest scores were related to the appropriate number of participants (2.67±0.72), learners’ knowledge of prerequisites (2.95±1.57) and proportion of the time of theoretical subjects and group work (3±0.94). As to implementation, the highest scores were related to the behavior and impact of teachers in learning (4.23±0.72) and clarity of goals (4.18±0.74), while the lowest scores were related to the content’s scientific accuracy (1.95±0.99), the lack of complete relevance of contents to learners’ needs (2.02±1.24) and improper implementation of group work (3.23±1.48). Conclusion: The results indicate the desirability of workshops’ design but most of the learners had an average evaluation of the implementation. Therefore, it is suggested that besides holding training courses for directors about the implementation of workshops, special attention should be given to overcoming the weaknesses of workshops’ design.