The declaration of the sanitary emergency of COVID-19 changed the way that multiple sectors operate. In education, in addition to taking care of the health and safety of the community, continuity and academic quality of programs must be ensured. This transition gave rise to a new digital educational model to offer a quality distance university experience. The objective of this chapter is to present a framework to assess the quality of a digital educational model, and to present the findings of an implementation of this model that resulted from the transformation of a medical program amid the health emergency of COVID-19.

The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic as a health emergency disrupted multiple sectors, and education was not an exception. Particularly in medical education, in addition to caring for patients that had been exposed to the virus, faculty members had the responsibility to guarantee academic quality and continuity. The transition to a remote emergency model gave rise to a new digital educational model that provided content delivery and the whole university experience. This study’s objective was to assess the quality of this digital educational model that resulted from the transformation. The study considered a quantitative approach, with a descriptive and cross-sectional design. The sampling strategy was a convenience sample of 213 first-year undergraduate students. As an instrument, a 28-item questionnaire with a Likert scale was used. The statistical analysis considered Cronbach’s alpha, item-total correlation, and factor analysis to analyze the instrument’s structure. Subsequently, descriptive statistics were used to identify trends in the responses of the participants. The internal consistency of the instrument is adequate with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.9. The factor analysis resulted in four dimensions representing the educational model: 1) content and curriculum, 2)teaching and learning practices, 3)technology and infrastructure, and 4)collaboration and networks. As educational innovations were being developed, the need to assess its impact on the quality of learning was necessary; thus, quality improvement is promoted and accountable. Implementations such as connecting to a learning environment through a mobile device or learning at a relaxed pace have been deeply appreciated. Now that we have tasted those facilitators, it should not be taken away; institutions need to resist the temptation of returning everything as it was before. Keywords: higher education, educational innovation, professional education, distance education, pandemic adaptations