Perception of undergraduate students towards online teaching during COVID-19 pandemic in a medical college in Hyderabad, India

INTRODUCTION

COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which originated in Wuhan city of China.COVID-19 is referred as pandemic due to its severity and fierceness and also as the greatest global health crisis till date. COVID-19's quick rise as a pandemic has had an impact on practically everyone's life and has transformed the way people used to interact.¹ It has also had an impact on medical education and clinical training, forcing medical institutions to transition to an online teaching approach. Medical education and clinical training have traditionally emphasised classroom teaching and bedside training, while several e-learning methods have recently gained popularity among students and teachers.² COVID-19 has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for medical teachers and students, and that is not an exaggeration. Given the lack of expensive gadgets, high-speed network challenges, and a lack of experienced teachers for online education, this is especially difficult in a resource-constrained country like India.¹ Students have both opportunities and obstacles when learning online. Accessibility, the use of proper methodologies, and course content, all play a role in the success of online learning. The goal of this research was to find out how students felt about online teaching and learning.

METHODS

Study type, location, duration and population

Current study was an Institutional based cross-sectional study conducted at Kamineni academy of medical sciences, LB Nagar, Hyderabad from September 1 to September 30, 2021. Study was conducted on students in the first to fourth years of MBBS

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria for current study were; should be a student of MBBS and should be willing to participate and give consent. Exclusion criterion for current study was students who are not willing to participate.

Sample size

In the institution where the present study was conducted, there were 600 MBBS students, out of which a total of 329 students had given consent to participate in the study.

Study tool and data collection

The data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire that had been pre-designed and pre-tested. A pilot study was done, and appropriate improvements were made before the actual study began. Students were given a questionnaire to examine their perceptions of online teaching. Students' perceptions of learning domain (SPL) from the Dundee ready education environmental measure (DREEM) questionnaire were utilized in the survey.^3,4 The data was examined at the end of the study period.

Statistical analysis

Data analysis was done using Epi info 7.2.5 and results were expressed in percentages, proportions, mean and standard deviation.

RESULTS

A total of 329 students took part in the study, with the majority of them being between the ages of 20 and 21. Females made up 77% of the responders, while males made up the remaining 23%. The majority of the participants were third year MBBS students (46%), followed by second year MBBS students (24%) (Table 1). About 55% of the students used smartphones for online learning (Figure 1), and 61% had W-LAN (Wireless connection) (Figure 2) as the most common type of internet connection.

None of the items on respondents' perception of online teaching-learning scored higher than 3.5 on an individual item-wise analysis of the rating scale SPL (Table 2). On the rating scale of students' perceptions of online teaching-learning, the mean score of individual items was 1.95, suggesting that the domain is in a problematic area.

Furthermore, the overall score of respondents' perceptions of online teaching-learning was 23.41±4.61 (Table 3). The most common challenge students faced when learning online was a variable internet connection (77.5%), followed by family distractions (61.7%). Students could profit from the following: avoidance of travel (82.1%), learning in space and comfort rather than face-to-face learning (61%), and so on. Only 62% of respondents indicated that online learning helped them gain practical skills (Table 4).

DISCUSSION

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 329 students to assess their perception of online teaching, among which 77% were females, and 23% were males, which was quite similar to a study in the United Kingdom done by Dost et al where 68.1% of respondents were women, 31.5% were men and 0.40% identified as other.⁵ In the present study, the overall mean score of students' perceptions of online teaching-learning was 23.41, indicating many problems with the online teaching-learning method, which was a similar study conducted in Nepal by Singh et al where the mean score was 17.61.⁶ This finding is in line with similar studies conducted in New Delhi by Hameed et al and Bangladesh by Sarkar et al where a majority of the students did not prefer online teaching-learning.^1,7 However, this contrasted with a study done by Ali et al where the nursing students had a positive attitude towards online teaching-learning.⁸ The students shared vivid experiences regarding online learning. Impediments to online learning were disruption of online connectivity (77.5%) and family distractions (61.7%), similar to a study by Dost et al.⁵ Isolation/anxiety was a significant finding reported by some respondents (15.2%). This may be attributed to the lack of interaction with friends and colleagues over a prolonged period. Similar findings were seen in studies by Dost et al in the United Kingdom and Abbasi et al in Pakistan.^5,9 Significant benefits the students derived from online learning were lack of travel (82.1%), ability to learn at their own pace (61.1%), cost savings (53.2%), flexibility (48.6%), etc. Similar responses were given in the study conducted by Dost et al and Al-Balas et al in Jordan.^5,10 One significant reported finding was that practical (clinical) skills could not be learned via online teaching by a majority of the study subjects (81.2%). This was similar to the study by Dost et al.⁵ Finally, 67.5% of the study subjects preferred face-to-face teaching over online teaching. This was similar to studies by Abbasi et al (77%) in Pakistan and Singh et al (94.6%) in Nepal.^6,9 However, this contrasts with research conducted in Australia by Warnecke et al which found that 95% of students favoured online learning and 75% believed it was useful in improving their skills.^10,11

Limitations

Limitations of current study were; the study was based on a small sample of students who have volunteered to provide feedback. Secondly, given the short timeframe for implementing this study, there was not enough time to create an effective training regimen for faculty members.

CONCLUSION

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected traditional teaching-learning methods, and online teaching has emerged as a boon to continue the learning process. However, many students faced many obstacles adapting to this new learning model. Hence, the offline mode of teaching was preferred over the online mode.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the principal, medical superintendent and institutional ethical committee of the institution for granting permission to conduct this research.

Funding: No funding sources

Conflict of interest: None declared

Ethical approval: The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee

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