Experience of Massive Distance Online Education for Medical Colleges and Universities in China to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Background As the COVID-19 outbreak influenced teaching in China, Chinese medical colleges and universities carried out massive online education with the participants of more than one million students on the for-profit or non-profit big–data teaching platforms, based on existing online teaching resources and other ways such as MOOC, Micro-course, Live-course and interactive discussion. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted via two rounds of 56-in-total questions on overall situations, platforms, teaching methods, training, teachers and students’ experiences, and encountered problems for 1747 teachers and 7223 students, which involved 741 courses. Comparative analysis was done on the survey results. Results A majority of teachers and students were satisfied with teaching platforms and effects; large commercial teaching platforms could provide better services; 67.21% of teachers and 64.67% of students preferred live teaching; only 76.84% of teachers and 58.69% of students were systematically trained; weak network, lack of training, overcrowded access to teaching platforms, lack of interaction, lack of efficient real-time evaluation and fatigue were current difficulties. Conclusions Good results of massive distance online education and teachers and students’ satisfaction with teaching platform performance show that online education can be used as a main means to replace traditional classroom education in emergency situations.</jats:p>

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