Abstract
The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected all aspects of human life, with education no exception. Online lectures have been practiced in different academic institutions around the world. The objective was to know the perception towards online lectures by the undergraduate students of a medical college. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among the undergraduate students of dentistry, medicine, and nursing at Kathmandu Medical College via self-administered online questionnaire. Data were collected from November to December 2020 after ethical clearance from institutional review committee (Ref. no. 0311202002). Students who had not attended even one hour of online learning per week were excluded. Responses were collected using Google Forms which were analysed in Microsoft Excel. Descriptive statistics are presentedas means, standard deciations, frequencies, and percentages. Out of 318 valid questionnaires, 143 (44.97%) students agreed that online lectures were effective but 138 (43.4%) disagreed that online lectures were more useful than traditional lectures. One hundred and forty five (45.60%) found online classes difficult to concentrate and 175 (55.03%) agreed that they preferred a combination of traditional teaching and online tutorials. Only two (0.63%) students strongly agreed on excellent internet during classes and 104 (32.70%) agreed it caused economic burden. Mean age of participants was 20.75±1.538 years; 202 (63.52%) were females; online learning per week was 18.75±9.157 hours; and duration of online learning was 20.28±9.997 weeks. Most of the students had a positive attitude towards e-learning when compared to similar studies. Further multicentric studies with larger sample size would better demonstrate whether online education partly or fully can be effective adjunct to traditional face to face interaction.
Highlights
The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected all aspects of human life, with education no exception
Out of total 318 valid questionnaires analysed, 151 (47.49%) participating students agreed that online lectures were helpful to their learning (Table 1)
138 (43.40%) students disagreed that online lectures were more useful than traditional lectures
Summary
The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected all aspects of human life, with education no exception. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affected health and education, business, and daily activities. Given the needs of the academic environment where learning can progress in optimal manner, the curriculum has to be frequently revised to improve the quality of health education.[1] The impact of the pandemic affected education at all levels and need for intelligent technology should be evaluated for future.[2, 3] Studies have shown that students perceived online classes as a supplement to live lectures and did not prefer e-teaching over face-to-face teaching during the lockdown situation.[4] Education administration and faculty members should take necessary measures to improve e-learning for better learning during lockdown.[5,6]
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