Effectiveness of Recorded Video Lectures vs Live Online Lectures as Teaching Tools among Phase 1 Medical StudentsA Prospective Study

Abstract

Introduction: During the pandemic, there were a lot of challenges for offline medical education. To overcome those challenges, online teaching methods were introduced for undergraduate medical education. Live online lectures (synchronous teaching) and recorded video lectures (asynchronous teaching) were the two commonly utilised teaching mediums of online education. Aim: To determine the effectiveness of recorded video lectures versus live online lectures and to analyse the students’ perception regarding these two teaching methods. Materials and Methods: This prospective interventional study was conducted in the Department of Physiology at Sree Gokulam Medical College and Research Foundation, Venjaramoodu, Trivandrum, Kerala, India. The duration of the study was six months, from March 2021-August 2021. A total of 150 students (97 girls and 53 boys) in two groups of 75 each. were selected as study population and four topics were taught to them. If, one group was taught via live online lecture, the same topic was given as a recorded video to the other group and after three days, an assessment was done. For the second topic, the method of lecture delivery was changed between the groups, while the rest of the methodology is the same. Topics 3 and 4 followed same pattern. Unpaired t-test was done to compare the scores and the data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 18.5 years. The results showed that, the recorded video lectures were equally effective as live online lectures. While analysing the students’ perception, it showed that students, to an extent, preferred recorded lectures to live lectures. Conclusion: The present study concluded that, the recorded video lectures are equally effective as live online lectures as a teaching tool, among phase 1 MBBS students.