The offline-to-online shift of medical education during COVID-19 pandemic: A mixed method study of medical teachers and students from India (preprint)

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Most institutes worldwide have experienced a forced shift to online mode education during COVID 19 pandemic. As in Indian Medical Institutions e-learning is not a well-established mode of teaching, it disrupts the newly implemented competency based medical education (CBME). This sudden shift in educational methods introduced new experiences, opportunities, and difficulties among medical teachers and students. In this study we explore undergraduate medical students and teachers’ perception, detailed insights and learning experience on online medical education. Method: This is an institution based mixed methods study conducted at three medical institutes in India. A self-prepared semi structured questionnaire was applied to extract various prospective of teaching and assessment through online mode. Qualitative descriptive design was applied using focused group discussion. All FGDs were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic content analysis to identify themes and subthemes regarding perceptions of online and offline education. Result: A total of 323 medical students out of 510 and 35 medical teachers out of 71 were included in the study. Most students and teachers agreed to the fact that they faced technical difficulties, perceived less connected, and felt difficulty in achieving desired competencies. In qualitative analysis five major themes (Learning Environment, Technology, Competency, Health issues, Assessment) and multiple subthemes were identified. Conclusion: Improvement of the online teaching methods with appropriate technical advancement may help to reduce the gap between the online and offline teaching learning modalities.