Online Medical Education: A look into the various perceptions, among students across India

Background: The students during the Covid time had been made to adopt online education to socially distance and pursue the curriculum at the safety of their homes. This type of education is important as the future demands learning to be a hybrid of both online and offline. The study was done with an objective of identifying various perceptions about online medical education among the students. Methodology: The crosssectional study was done among 578 students across various medical colleges in India and the data was collected using online platform where the questionnaire was regarding socio-demographic details, advantages and disadvantages, teacher’s quality, hinderances and suggestions with respect to online education. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS 21. Results: Out of the 578 subjects 386 (66.8%) were females and 413 (71.5%) responses were from private college. In the study 449 (77.7%) students were from the state of Tamilnadu. The study showed a significant increase in the number of students using various learning modalities like video lectures. Power point and pre-recorded lectures/tutorials after the advent of online classes. Most of the students reported the maximum concentration time for videos and pre-recorded lectures/tutorials, and least for PDF/ MS Word document. The study showed that 314(54%) students preferred blended or hybrid learning in the future. Conclusion: In the study the students reported the need for high selfdiscipline and motivation considered necessary for the online education. The students reported more biased attention and use of video-based lectures in terms of increased time spending and concentration time. So the revised modules should be made available with importance towards visual capture and to reduce the monotony of the medical education.