Virtual Pathways: Transforming Medical Biochemistry Education With e-Biology During the COVID-19 Era

Abstract

Face-to-face teaching was quickly moved to remote teaching following the introduction of a national lockdown in the United Kingdom (UK) on 23 March 2020 to tackle the coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19). In this context, De Montfort University (DMU, UK) expanded and adapted its pre-existing open-access virtual learning environment, named e-Biology (http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/ebiology/), to better support clinical biochemistry education in a remote setting. Originally created in 2017 to assist students' transition into biomedical science programmes, e-Biology was updated with specific modules for clinical biochemistry, including theoretical, laboratory, microscope, and case study components. This package has been used to teach final-year BSc Biomedical Science students since 2020/2021. Detailed analysis of scores of two multiple choice question tests distributed at the beginning (preScore; 39.3% and 41.4% successful, for all the cohort and paired students' exams, respectively) and end of the module (postScore; 41.8% and 45.3% successful), did show an improvement in students' overall performance but without statistical significance. However, this improvement showed statistical significance for the paired exams for the last cohort (2022/2023; from 34.0% to 46.8%; p < 0.05; n = 13/146). A total of 77.9% of respondents to the feedback questionnaire concurred that the mini-games and exercises within the e-practicals facilitated their learning and aided in their preparation for the unseen practical exam, while 13.0% neither agreed nor disagreed. These findings suggest that e-Biology was an effective tool for supporting the teaching and learning of applied clinical biochemistry remotely and may serve as a useful resource for blended and online education across STEM disciplines.