Comment on: Engaging Medical Students in Curriculum Design: Evaluating a Model for Active Participation and Co-Creation of an Elective Course Curriculum [Letter]

Abstract

We read with interest the study by Eltayar and Mady describing a co-creation model for elective curriculum design, in which 277 final-year medical students identified their own learning objectives and were guided through Kern’s six-step framework grounded in self-determination theory. 1 The qualitative findings provide particularly valuable insight into how a co-designed intervention is experienced by learners. Students consistently described greater autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We also commend the authors for using an established theoretical framework and for transparently reporting the single dissenting account among 277 participants. We do, however, wish to raise a concern about the paper’s central quantitative conclusion. The authors interpret the increase in mean knowledge scores (mean score increasing from 8.4 to 17.6 of 20, Z = −4.82, p = 0.01) as evidence of the “educational effectiveness” of the co-creation model. We do not believe that the study design allows for this conclusion to be drawn. The posttest