The transition to remote education format in medical university: opinion of students about transformation of education process at the outset of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic came out as an imperative of large-scale transformations in higher education system, including higher medical school. At that, introduction of self-isolation regime in the spring 2020 highlighted the task of organizing education in remote format with maintaining education quality. The article presents results of sociological survey with purpose of studying perception of students of medical university of transition to remote learning format at the COVID-19 pandemic outset. The majority of respondents perceived remote learning format as an emergency measure to maintain continuity of education process, that, however, cannot completely replace full-time practice-oriented teaching "at the bedside of the patient". Understanding the special tasks of training medical specialist required new solutions from higher school and additional efforts from all subjects of educational process - restructuring organizational infrastructure ensuring communication of teaching staff and students, solving organizational problems of access to educational content, adapting to practice of digital medical education, expanding use of AR, VR, mixed reality and simulation learning technologies. The students, highly assessing quality of digital content, noted difficulties of self-organization in "home" format due to a lot of distracting factors (family, domestic life, etc.) that had key impact on motivation of their learning activities. Nevertheless, among respondents of medical university, a number of students formed subgroup that considering personal experience of remote learning assumed that this format is actual and effective and allows one to fully master university curriculum. The transition to remote learning format in university as emergency measure during pandemic, will obviously be consolidated as an invariant standard of organizing educational process.