Medical student's preference of educational resource usage during COVID-19 pandemic from Northern India

Abstract

Introduction: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) posed an extraordinary situation in front of humankind with the onset of the year 2020. The Government of India, on March 16, 2020, announced closure of all the educational institutions. The aim of this study was to investigate the accessible and preferable educational resources among medical students during this pandemic phase. Materials and Methods: This web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 392 undergraduate medical students after obtaining informed consent using a structured questionnaire with close-ended responses. Existence of clustering within the student's preferred educational resources was investigated. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 20.71 ± 1.65, with 51.3% males and 48.7% females. The major responses regarding educational resources were online lectures, online teaching videos, reading textbooks, and written notes. Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed preference for online lectures, online teaching videos, interactive online materials, and medical apps. Conclusion: As the count of users for educational resources available over the Internet is uprising, now, it is vital to generate evidence-based systems which support teaching merits and provide guidance for efficient teaching material available for online learning.

Keywords

• knowledge
• learning
• online
• revision
• textbooks