The perception of the medical faculty and undergraduate students regarding online teaching in the era of COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: In this COVID-19 epidemic, most of the countries are facing issues regarding health care from the points of management, academic, and treatment. Online medical education as an alternate source has been utilized, but it entails certain solutions to the problems encountered in this new methodology of medical education. The study was conducted to enhance the knowledge about the barriers and the concurrent solutions and help improve online medical education in COVID era. Materials and Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional study was conducted on 336 undergraduate medical students 61 medical faculty members of ABVMS, Jammu. The two online intake forms in the form of a voluntary, self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data; whose link was made active from May 15, 2020, to May 30, 2020. The questionnaire was designed with 10 questions for faculty and 7 for students. The questions encompassed different subjects related to their preferences and perception of online learning. The data were entered in MS Excel and analyzed using the SPSS software version 20.0. P <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The medical faculty perceived online class discussions and assessments of the students as difficult barriers (27.87% and 40.99%, respectively) and access to books/images for teaching and lectures making and delivering as easy (50.82% and 52.46%, respectively). The students felt that the ease of theoretical learning was best with downloadable AV lectures (54.46%). A total of 48.15% students and 31.15% faculty members supported the use of online education in future (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: The coronavirus pandemic appears to be an inflection point that is forcing disruption in how we teach medicine. While in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis, the medical faculty and the students are willing for a favorable change from offline to online medical education in view of an online instructional support/training, and infrastructural change. The following core competencies are addressed in this article: Interpersonal and communication skills, Practice-based learning and improvement.