The First Dive into the Ocean of Non-Face-to-Face Learning

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Introduction Students’ self-learning time that takes place outside of the classroom is an unmeasured learning time. In medical education, students’ learning in the presence and the absence of a teacher are ‘Face-to-Face’ (F2F) and ‘Non-Face-to-Face’ (NF2F) learning, respectively. Traditionally, the content of a topic delivered by a teacher in a one-hour lecture is recognized as F2F learning time. However, its mirror NF2F learning time that is students’ self-learning remains unknown. The objective of this study was to reckon the NF2F learning time for pharmacology topics taught by F2F one-hour lecture method. Methods In a cross-over study, following convenience sampling, two cohorts of undergraduate medical students (N=200) were randomly divided into two equal subgroups; group I and group II. For data purposes, novice and expert faculty categorized based on their teaching experience taught two pharmacology topics (Aminoglycosides drugs and Estrogen drugs) by lecture method. Respondents gave their perceived NF2F (self-learning) time on a Five-point Likert scale. The association of teaching experience and NF2F learning time of students was observed by applying the chi-square test. Results For contents delivered in a one-hour lecture, the NF2F learning time by most students was ≥ 3 hours. There was a significant statistical association between students NF2F learning time and teachers’ experience for ‘Aminoglycosides drugs’ [X2, 95% CI: 4.985, 2.062 (1.087, 3.193), p 0.026]. It was noted that the NF2F learning time had no association with gender (P> 0.05). Conclusion Mostly, the required NF2F learning time is more than double the time of F2F time. The implication of this study suggests that the estimation of students’ NF2F learning time may likely be estimated for other topics of pharmacology in a controlled manner.