Background: Education informatization is still in the early stage in China. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led medical educators passively incorporating information technology for remote medical teaching, in which challenges and opportunities have co-existed.Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (1) explore the medical educators' perception and experience of online teaching in medical education before and after emergency remote teaching (ERT) experience during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) illustrate the medical educators' satisfaction on the contribution of online teaching on medical teaching, and (3) reveal the main challenges medical educators met when they conduct the ERT during the COVID-19 epidemic, and to demonstrate whether the challenges are a different by age or gender including some other factors.Methods: A web-based questionnaire was disseminated to the faculty of medical education departments at higher institutions in China. The collected quantitative data of the questionnaire were analyzed by using the SPSS software package. Descriptive statistics were conducted on demographic data and the perception and experience of medical educators before and after the COVID-19 were shown as the frequencies and percentages, while the teachers' opinions on contribution of online teaching on medical education were analyzed by descriptive statistics with means and standard deviations. Multiple response analysis combined with crosstabulation chi-square test was applied, and a P-value <.05 was considered to be statistically significant to exams the relationship between age as well as gender and difficulties met in online teaching respectively.Results: A total of 26 medical educators (65.38%, n=17 female and 34.62%, n=9 male) were valid participants. Total 57.69% (n=15) of them had used web-based teaching before the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas 43.21% (n=11) had not. The agreement level on the teaching effect of online teaching was medium, with a mean value of 2.55 (range from 1-5). The first two difficulties medical teachers came across in online teaching were the web-based instructional design (27%), and the unfamiliarity with web-based teaching tools (25 %). No significant difference in the types of difficulties encountered by different ages (P=0.969) or gender (P = 0.873) in online teaching.Conclusions: The majority of medical educators are open-minded to incorporating online teaching into their teaching practice in the future. However, medical educators in China commonly faced shared difficulties when they adopted online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Identify these challenges and proposing some relevant suggestions to promote a further increase in the active adoption of information technology in medical education.

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