Medical students’ perception of online learning during COVID-19 pandemic in India-a survey

ABSTRACT

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic situation has immensely affected teaching in all institutions, especially in medical colleges. To minimize the impact of lockdown, current technology enabled online learning (E-learning) to be the important method of teaching the student during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aim and Objectives: The main objective of the present study to analyze perception of online teaching approach of medical students after 1 month of online learning without faceto-face learning. Materials and Methods: A survey was conducted by distributing an online questionnaire to 710 medical students. This research study was conducted from May 15 to May 16, 2021. Data gathered from the survey were analyzed with Epi info 7.1.5.0 software. Results: A total of 452 (63.66%) were male and 258 (36.34%) were female. Learning on your own place (80.1%), ability to stay at home (72.1%), access to online materials (59.2%), and ability to record meeting (49.8%) were the most frequent advantages of e-learning selected by medical students. The majority of students chose lack of interaction with patients (66.8%), technical problems (53.9%), reduced interaction with faculty (50.3%), social isolation (44.9%) as the main disadvantages. E-learning was considered less effective than face-to-face learning in terms of increasing skills (M = 2.1, M = 4.6, respectively) (P < 0.001) and social competences (M = 2.8, M = 4.8, respectively) (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The online learning was found to be advantageous as it provided flexibility and convenience for the learners. All these factors should be considered while developing an online course to make it more effective and productive for the learner.