[Online examination course instead of classroom teaching: adaptation of medical student teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic].

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restricted face-to-face interactions of medical students and teachers.

Objective: To develop and evaluate an online course for ophthalmology examination techniques for medical students and to determine the impact of the course on the practical objective structured clinical examination (OSCE).

Material and methods: The online examination course was developed as a video-based tutorial according to the SMART (specific, measurable, activating, reasonable, time-bound) principle covering all topics of the National Competency-based Catalogue of Learning Objectives for Medical Education and made available to medical students in the ophthalmology course. At the end of the semester the students graded the online examination course on an ordinal scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree) anonymously and were asked for comments. The grades of the OSCE (range 1-5) were compared with the OSCE results of the previous semester.

Results: Of the 164 students 67 participated in the online evaluation (41%). The students reported to be well-prepared for the OSCE (mean grade 2.0; SD 1.0). In the future, 70% of the students would prefer combined online and on-site teaching (47 out of 67 students). Among all 164 students, the mean OSCE results were excellent (mean grade 1.1; SD 0.2) and comparable to the previous semester (mean grade among 166 students, 1.1; SD 0.2; two-sided t-test, p = 0.86).

Conclusion: The online course on ophthalmology examination techniques allowed medical students to prepare for the OSCE. Beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching options can support on-site teaching.