COVID-19 and Online Education in Iran’s Universities of Medical Sciences: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Context: With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid growth of online education, Iranian universities of medical sciences began to hold online classes for students. Accordingly, the present study aimed to examine different aspects of online education in medical universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This narrative review study was to review studies on online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran’s universities of medical sciences. To this end, the PubMed and Sciencedirect databases as well as the Google Scholar scientific search engine were searched on April 20, 2021 using the following keywords: ‘online education,’ ‘virtual education,’ ‘virtual learning,’ ‘e-learning,’ ‘COVID-19,’ and ‘Iran’. Results: The present findings revealed Navid, Adobe Connect, and SkyRoom platforms as the most popular online teaching tools in Iran’s universities of medical sciences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main challenges in online education in Iranian universities of medical sciences was students’ non-equal accessibility to appropriate hardware, software, and communication tools, students and professors’ insufficient knowledge and unfamiliarity with information technology tools and e-learning, lack of proper interactions between professors and students, and the lack of a suitable platform for practical clinical training and internships. Conclusions: Educational simulation systems and online education support systems are useful in teaching clinical, practical, and internship courses to students and promoting interactions between teachers and students.

Job Satisfaction and Overcoming the Challenges of Teleworking in Times of COVID-19: A Pilot Study Among Iranian University Community

“…However, their results demonstrated that some disadvantages (e.g., role conflict and lack of face-to-face position) are also attributable to telecommuting among academic teleworkers. In another Iranian study, Dastani (2021) examined different aspects of online education in Iranian medical universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of his study revealed that “the main challenges of online education in Iranian universities were college students’ non-equal accessibility to appropriate hardware, software, and communication tools, students and professors’ insufficient knowledge and unfamiliarity with information technology tools and e-learning, lack of proper interactions between professors and students, and the lack of a suitable platform for practical clinical training and internships.”…”

Simulación de formación educativa y profesional de estudiantes

“…Such interest in this issue is due to the desire to improve the educational process and the search for optimal tools to improve education (Hooshyar, Yousefi & Lim, 2018). The system of professional education is almost always the epicentre of contradictions, when it is necessary to take into account the changing paradigm of the educational market, socioeconomic transformations (Dastani, 2021). New socio-educational priorities, dominants, innovations and their evolutionary development are the source and subject of target innovative pedagogical research (Balve & Albert, 2015).…”

Post-COVID Medical Education

“…Interestingly, studies from developed countries tend to praise virtual medical education; however, developing countries give negative reports on the subject (3). In a study conducted in Iran, the lack of recourses that hindered some students' access to the virtual material, unfamiliarity with the technology, and the lack of interaction and a suitable platform for clinical training were observed to be the main faced challenges (6).…”