Medical students prefer offline classes over online: Study

MANGALURU: Are medical education students ready for a pandemic-influenced future with online classes? A study by medical health education faculty members from a medical college in Mangaluru revealed that more undergraduate students prefer offline mode of teaching. However, they are ready for online classes if there are situations like the Covid.
A study was conducted by doctors of Kasturba Medical College, Mangaluru. Study was conducted between December 2020 and March 2022 to assess the perceptions of online lecture classes among medical students, their experience with online teaching, and associated factors. The participants include students of Medicine (MBBS), Physiotherapy (BPT), and Basic Science (BSc, MSc) from the institution.
Dr Mithra, from community medicine at KMC, said the study gave them insights into how offline/online classes are received by the medical students. They took the positive feedback of the study, and implemented them for better academic outcomes.
The study analysed learning preferences of 992 undergraduate health science students when online classes. Overall, 151 (15.2%) participants preferred online teaching. More than half (57.0%) used laptops as their primary device to attend the online classes. Further, 434 (43.8%) used laptops with a webcam, and 131 (13.2%) used laptops without a webcam. The next most popular device among the participants was mobile phones, with 317 (31.9%) participants using them. A few students also relied on iPads (7.9%) and android tablets (3.2%).
Online classes offer distinct benefits including the freedom to choose their study location and dress code. The ability to revisit recorded sessions at convenient time was the second most valued aspect of online classes. However, they said it lacked direct interaction, which could be enhanced by hybrid teaching methods. In addition, network and device-related issues and a lack of a traditional classroom setup made the participants choose online teaching.
Students felt that a lack of clinical exposure and in-person interaction were disadvantages of online classes. The findings were published in the International Journal of Advances in Medicine in Dec 2024.