Online teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate medical students in pediatrics: Single-center experience

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to change its approach to medical education with most of the undergraduate (UG) teaching shifting to online mode. As in other colleges in India, we also switched to online classes for both UG and postgraduate (PG) students in April 2020. We intend to share our preliminary experience about the acceptance and performance of these online classes in Pediatrics. Methodology: For UGs, we studied the attendance and marks of term ending summative assessment of batch of 2020 who attended online classes and compared them to the attendance and marks of the term ending summative assessment of the previous three batches (2017, 2018, and 2019). We also obtained a feedback on a prevalidated questionnaire from the UG as well as PG students. Results: The mean ± standard deviation (SD) attendance of the batch of 2020 was 81.6 ± 16.2%, while that of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 batch during the same period was 84.9 ± 10.9%, 92.6 ± 4.8%, and 83.0 ± 7.6% respectively. Similarly, the mean ± SD marks for the batch of 2020 was 74.8 ± 6.5% while it was 66.9 ± 9.4%, 58.6 ± 10.1%, and 60.9 ± 9.7% for 2017, 2018, and 2019 batches, respectively. The feedback obtained from both UGs and PGs was satisfactory in relation to the acceptance of the online mode. Conclusion: The online classes in Pediatrics are a reasonable alternative to the onsite classes in the prevailing situation.

Keywords

• medical students
• online teaching
• postgraduate teaching
• undergraduate teaching