Abstract
BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been found to negatively affect medical students’ wellbeing. This finding may be related to how medical education is being conducted at present, with online learning replacing face-to-face teaching in many countries. This cross-sectional study aims to assess how the online learning environment is connected to medical students’ wellbeing.MethodsA self-administered online questionnaire was distributed to undergraduate medical students at Universitas Indonesia. The study was conducted from September 2020 to February 2021. The questionnaire included a modified version of the Online Learning Environment Scale (OLES) and the Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment (PERMA) profiler. The OLES was used to evaluate students’ perceptions of the online learning environment, whereas the PERMA Profiler was used to evaluate students’ wellbeing. We validated the questionnaire before distribution. The content validity index was 1.0, with internal consistency coefficients of 0.87 and 0.89, respectively. Regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relationship between OLES and PERMA scores.ResultsThe questionnaire was completed by 274 undergraduate medical students. Students reported moderate to high degrees of positive perception towards online learning, high levels of positive emotions and moderate levels of negative emotions. Statistically significant differences were found across groups based on students’ gender, year of study and academic programme. Almost all aspects of the online learning environment were significantly predictive of students’ wellbeing, with personal relevance and evaluation and assessment being the two most important predictors (R2 = 0.201; P < 0.001).ConclusionMedical students generally enjoyed online learning, although some challenges were presented. The online learning environment was positively associated with students’ wellbeing; however, some students expressed negative emotions including loneliness, anxiety, anger and sadness.
Highlights
Despite countless pandemic control measures during the past year, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains a global threat that may undermine an individual’s quality of life
Previous reports confirmed that healthcare workers, including physicians, who treated COVID-19 patients suffered from high levels of stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation and depression — all of which have been negatively associated with the state of wellbeing [2–3]
This analytic, cross-sectional study was conducted in the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Indonesia, which transformed its curriculum into fully online learning courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic
Summary
Despite countless pandemic control measures during the past year, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains a global threat that may undermine an individual’s quality of life. The amount of time spent during online learning may be similar to that spent during face-to-face learning on a typical day, but an increasing number of students claim to be more stressed than usual This condition, termed ‘videoconferencing fatigue’ by some, is considered by several studies to interfere with learners’ wellbeing [5–6]. Lyons et al [7] found that the uncertainty arising from abrupt changes to medical courses (e.g. online learning, elimination of face-to-face discussions) has contributed to higher psychological distress among medical students. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been found to negatively affect medical students’ wellbeing This finding may be related to how medical education is being conducted at present, with online learning replacing face-to-face teaching in many countries. This cross-sectional study aims to assess how the online learning environment is connected to medical students’ wellbeing
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