EVALUATION OF IMPACT OF ONLINE TEACHING DURING COVID PANDEMIC

Abstract

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in medical education have varied from country to country, from closures of medical schools to online/distance learning approaches to abiding by country-specic measures such as social distancing to stop the spread of the disease. This is a new problem faced by the entire world and also Indian medical colleges. We planned a study to evaluate the impact of online teaching during the COVID pandemic, to assess the stress of students during online classes and to compare the efciency of online vs traditional classroom teaching. Institutional ethical clearance was obtained and the study was done in the Department of Pharmacology, Govtovernment Sivagangai Medical College, Sivagangai with 100 II year MBBS students studying at Govt. Sivagangai Medical College, Sivagangai as study participants. All IInd year MBBS students were be included, Questionnaires were framed through Google form and the student response to the online class session was assessed. Data collected was be subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS version 21 we found 60 percent of students were attending online classes for more than 6 hours per day and 70 percent were willing to attend the classes for more than 6 hours per day. 70 percent used mobile phones to access online classes. 55 percent had no health issues while the remaining 45 percent had health issues in that 15 percent had a headache, 20 percentage had eye strain and 10 had both complaints out of the 45 students who said they had health-related issues. 60 percent reported that they had no stress in attending online classes, easy access to the mobiles and multitasking were the advantage faced by students during these online classes and the disadvantage is that bad network issues, gadget all time and self-motivation factors online classes were preferred by the students during the pandemic lockdown as it is the only source of their learning and it may be supplemented to normal ofine classes in near future.