Latest trends in medical education during COVID pandemic: a cross sectional study

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Parallel to past technological revolutions, along with existing pandemic crises has made digitally assisted tools, and formats for e-learning an essential component of medical Curriculam. This current study objectives were to find out the opinion of the students about the use and efficacy of the distance learning tools during the Covid-19 crises and its impact on learning and academic achievements among medical students of Saudi Arabia. Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted among 1021 medical college students of Saudi Arabia by developing a survey questionnaire composed of sociodemographic characteristics of participants, study habits assessment including teacher engagement and student-teacher interactions, assessment of distance teaching approaches such as availability of internet services at home, the usefulness of live sessions or recorded videos, number of hours one can attend the sessions and stay motivated, assessment of academic performance, evaluation of respondents experience and technical infrastructure, psychosocial assessment of respondents, and their coping with COVID-19 crises. Results: Among 1021 students, 503 (49%) were males and 518 (51%) females. 64% agree that distance teaching tools used by the teachers were easy to understand and use, and 55% responded that they are very much satisfied with E-learning provided by their institute. There was no significant difference observed between students on the usefulness of different approaches in facilitating learning experience except 'Self-study using text and/or video materials provided by the teacher approach' (P=0.043). Conclusion: The findings showed satisfactory results, showing that Saudi Arabia's respective medical universities offered good online support and orientation to overcome COVID 19 crises, and students found distance learning tools easy to use and understand as the support provided by the medical universities staff. Future steps would be taken based on the observed results, and further improvement would be implemented to make the learning process easier for medical students.