Covid-19 Online Learning and its Impact on the Level of Understanding among Undergraduate Nursing and Physiotherapy First-Year Students

Background: COVID-19 brought drastic changes and impacts on students around the world. Most of the students moved from face-to-face studies into online learning and that’s badly impacts their level of learning, regarding using online learning as a model and tool for learning. To know the level of understanding of students in online learning, to explore hinder factors in online learning, and to know the student's attitude towards online learning methods, we did this study. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in two of the private medical universities in Karachi. Data was collected through a well-defined structured questionnaire from 225 respondents after taking consent and data was analyzed through by statistical package for social sciences SPSS. T-test was used for analysis. The duration of the study was 4 weeks. Results: 89.3% of the student’s studies were affected due to online learning during COVID-19. The level of learning and understanding of 52% of the students were average, 18.7 % of the student’s level of learning and understanding was poor and 29.3% of student's level of understanding was good. The hinder factors during online learning were, 80.4% of the students were internet issues, 76.4% of students were voice/listening issues, and 74.2% of the students were facing an electric shutdown issue. Student's attitudes toward online learning was in that way that 52.4% of students said that online learning is not effective and 47.6% of students did not agree. 34.7% of the student's overall online learning experience were average, 25.8% of the students were below average, 6.7 % students were poor, and 32.9% of students were a good experience. 56.9% of students said that they will not recommend online learning. Conclusion: Online teaching has a negative impact on the level of learning and understanding of students. Internet issues, voice/listening, and electric shutdown are the hinder factors for online learning. Student's attitudes toward online learning was also negative and students were not preferred online Learning.