Abstract
(1) Introduction: Most educational institutions around the world have shifted from traditional face-to-face to online education amid COVID-19. This change may particularly impact medical students, whose education is heavily influenced by clinical learning experiences. Accordingly, we investigated medical students’ perceptions about positive and negative aspects of online medical education in Japan and overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic. (2) Methods: In-depth online interviews were conducted among 13 Japanese medical students and five medical students from Slovakia, Norway, and Hungary. Interviews were conducted from 23rd September to 3rd October 2020 using the snowball sampling method. Questions were focused on five main areas: Q1 the type of online education; Q2 advantages and disadvantages of online education; Q3 any changes in the relationship with teachers, friends, and family; Q4 any opinions about further improvements in online education; and Q5 any needs for affiliation with a particular university. Then thematic analysis was conducted. (3) Results: The results of the thematic analysis revealed the following four themes that represent the positive and negative aspects of online medical education; Theme 1: Timesaving and Flexibility; Theme 2: Technical problems and lack of digital skills; Theme 3: Unstandardized teaching skills; Theme 4: Lack of experience beyond medical school lectures. (4) Conclusions: While online education was found useful in terms of saving time and creating a flexible learning environment, many important drawbacks were noted such as internet and computer problems and unstandardized teaching skills, and lack of quality assurance. In addition, experiences outside the classroom such as making relationships with faculty and friends, conducting research and participating in extracurricular activities were missed, which they normally enjoy in college life.
Highlights
Clinical experience in medical education is a fundamental step for undergraduate medical students to learn practical patient care [1]
The interviewers were guided by the following five open-ended questions structured around the participants’ experience, mainly with online education during the COVID-19 pandemic: (Q1) a type of online education, which participants had received during the COVID-19 pandemic; (Q2) advantages and disadvantages of online education, which participants had experienced; (Q3) changes in the relationship with teachers, peers, friends, and family; (Q4) opinions on further improvement of online education, and (Q5)
This advantage has been noted in another previous study [29], our data suggests that this advantage was achieved even in the sudden enforced and unprepared delivery of online learning in the COVID-19 pandemic
Summary
Clinical experience in medical education is a fundamental step for undergraduate medical students to learn practical patient care [1]. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), governments were forced to implement strict policy including the closure of public spaces, travel restrictions, national lockdowns, and school closure [2,3]. These restrictions were extended to medical schools across the world, and medical students were subjected to many restrictions in their private and educational settings, such as being forced to change their normal learning environment, being isolated in their house or dormitory, etc. Due to the need to provide online lectures in almost all schools, the Japanese government established an exception to permit all educational institutions to use copyrighted works in online lectures free of charge only for the fiscal year 2020 Owing to this act, most educational institutions, including medical schools, shifted from traditional face-to-face education to online education, albeit with a few obstacles [5,11,12].
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