Perception among undergraduate medical students about online teaching in a government medical college of West Bengal

Abstract

Background-COVID 19 pandemic had disrupted the traditional method of face-to-face learning and paved the way for online learning. Students’ and teachers’ perspective are important for further improve the quality of online learning. Objective -To study the perception of online teaching by the undergraduate medical students. Materials and method-The study was conducted on 216 undergraduate medical students of a medical college in Kolkata over a period of 2 months. All the students who completed the predesigned and pretested questionnaire administered through google forms were included in the study. The analysis was done in SPSS version 22. Results-The mean age of the study participants was 20.8 years. Majority of the participants used mobile phones for attending classes and WhatsApp for coordinating online classes and uploading live classes. Most of the participants perceived online class for lecture classes and face-to-face class for practical classes. There is statistical association between mode of interaction with faculty and sex (P=0.000).The main advantages of online learning were attending from comfort zone, more time for self-study, flexible timing, not hectic and boring, easy storage and accessibility, downloadable sessions and study materials can be studied for multiple times. Conclusion-There is a need to train the teachers and the students about online platforms for improving the quality of teaching learning methods. Qualitative research may be done to fine out the core problems of the students to handle this new method of education.