Impact of online learning; experiences and attitudes of faculty and students from two medical colleges

Introduction: In this changing paradigm of flipped classrooms, online learning is becoming center of focus. The spread of CoVID-19 pandemic has prompted medical institutions to quickly adopt online curriculum delivery to avoid any breaks. This transition seems to adequately serve the needs of medical education. As this new technology is rapidly being implemented, the students’ and teachers’ perspectives need to be evaluated to assess the outcome of these changes and to design effective strategies. Objectives: To assess the impact of online learning by recording experiences and attitudes of faculty members and students from two medical institutions. Materials & Methods: The study was conducted at SCM and FUMC, Islamabad. 275 3rd year MBBS students from both medical colleges along with 40 faculty members were enrolled after taking consent. Their perspectives were taken by a questionnaire. They were asked about familiarity of e-learning, its advantages, disadvantages, credibility of online assessments and whether e-learning should be part of future medical education. The data was analyzed using SPSS23. Results: 34 faculty members and 214 students from both institutes completed the questionnaire. Majority of the faculty members and students believed that e-learning can only serve as complementary role to traditional teaching. Conclusion: E-learning provided us the needed mode to continue delivering the course in the need of the hour. Both faculty and students deemed that online learning is not as proficient as face-to-face teaching however, hybrid model combining both modalities can achieve better results.