Are medical students equipped for digital studies?Have their hopes and fears been confirmed during Covid-19? What should we consider in the future?

Abstract

Digitisation in the education of future doctors was still in its infancy before the Covid pandemic. For the successful implementation of digital teaching, students need the technical equipment and the necessary skills to use it in a meaningful way. Furthermore, it requires a willingness to adapt the learning environment and to take responsibility for self-directed learning. At the beginning of 2020, faculties were forced to convert all teaching to digital formats. Initial research shows that students prefer face-to-face teaching. To determine whether medical students were prepared for digital studies and what should be considered for the future, we analysed surveys at the beginning of online studies and after two Corona semesters at a medical faculty. We were able to show that although our students had good technology equipment, they had a rather negative attitude towards online teaching for various reasons and developed negative emotions. Deficits in design of educational material, and personal learning habits raised concern. A lack of guidance and a lack of interaction with fellow students contributed to this. Adjustments in these areas will be necessary in the future to provide students with positive access to digital studies and thus increase learning success.

Factors Affecting Undergraduate Medical Students' Perception of Online Education During the COVID Pandemic at a Teaching Hospital in Eastern India

“…A study done in Germany after one year of online learning showed that students preferred offline classes, similar to the present study findings (15). Poor agreement about online class satisfaction is in line with another Indian study where 69% of students had low to moderate satisfaction with online education (16).…”

“…Studies have explored the global phenomena of online medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic from international, national, and regional perspectives (6,10,15,(17)(18)(19)22). There is general agreement about the lower perceived effectiveness of online mode with less scope for interaction, learning practical/clinical skills, and proper evaluation.…”

An evaluation of undergraduate student nurses' gameful experience whilst playing a digital escape room as part of a FIRST year module: A cross-sectional study

“…It is also important to consider that, whilst some students do well in digital learning environments, others lose motivation and become disengaged ( Teodorescu et al, 2021 ). Whilst many studies ( Naciri et al, 2021 ; Stoehr et al, 2021 ) offer a rather positive assessment of the “emergency shift” from on campus to distance learning, others paint a very different picture, with students lacking the knowledge and skills to efficiently use digital technology ( Machleid et al, 2020 ) and developing negative emotions towards online learning ( Herbstreit et al, 2021 ). According to Chiu et al (2021) , more attention should be paid to promoting and maintaining student (and teacher) motivation, preparing students for technology-assisted learning by fostering digital skills and cultivating self-efficacy during online learning, addressing the psychological needs of students in designing online learning, including relatedness support and emotional development, promoting peer support, and addressing equity and social justice concerns in learning with technology ( Chiu and Lim, 2020 ).…”

“…Thus, it is possible that some of the participants were not necessarily unmotivated to play the DER, but to do so online. Specifically, concerns have been raised regarding the students' learning habits, insufficient guidance and scarce interaction with the teacher and fellow students ( Herbstreit et al, 2021 ). This has implications on how students should be engaged and supported online, especially when distance learning during the pandemic was neither their preference nor their choice.…”

Screen-based digital learning methods in radiation oncology and medical education

“…As such, it drove significant widespread upgrades in digital delivery infrastructure [99] . Web-cameras, online learning management systems, video-conferencing software and digital authoring tools have all became commonplace, essentially overnight [100] .…”