English

Abstract

BACKGROUND As the epidemic of corona virus disease - 19 (COVID – 19) has struck the entire world, schools and colleges had to shut, there was a sudden shift from in-person education to online education which became difficult for the institutions. There was a distinctive rise of e-learning and this method of learning has several amazing features that would be useful for use during this period as this will constitute a new and fantasizing method of learning for the students. METHODS This is a cross-sectional study. The study participants were the students from dental college in Faridabad from 1st year to the final year of under graduate (UG) program. The total number of participants were 340 students. An online questionnaire was designed and given to students through the platform, google forms. This questionnaire consisted of three parameters - attitude, social presence, and student satisfaction. RESULTS Among the 340 students, 40 % of the students were males and 60 % of them were females. The three domains measured attitude, social presence, and satisfaction; to elearning had fourteen, seven and nine questions respectively. Pearson’s correlation test was applied, P - value was significant at P ˂ 0.05. When the three perspectives of e-learning were correlated with e-learners using pearson’s correlation coefficient, it was found that there was a very strong positive correlation among these three domains (P = 0.0001 for all three perspectives).The correlation between the three perspectives of e-learning, attitude versus social presence was 0.773, attitude versus satisfaction was 0.756 and social presence versus satisfaction was 0.794. CONCLUSIONS A predominantly positive response has been observed for satisfaction aspect. The results showed a positive response as it was seen in other surveys. When it comes to the social presence, the study shows that the online setting becomes impersonal but the comfort in collaboration is better than offline model. KEY WORDS Learning, COVID - 19 Pandemic, Attitude, Satisfaction, Social Presence, Dental Students