A study on medical students’ perspective regarding online learning from a selected government medical school

Background: During the Covid Pandemic, online lectures played a crucial role in medical education. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of incorporating online teaching in medical curriculum. Methods: Data was collected via a self-administered online questionnaire from 360 Medical Students of a selected Medical Faculty in Sri Lanka. Results: Among our study population 63% (213/338) were females aged between 20 to 29 with a mean of 23.4 years (Standard deviation 2.09). Before the pandemic only 3.6% had used online lectures during their medical curriculum. At the time of data collection 56% of the students had attended more than 50 online lectures. Majority (65.6%) of the study population stated that their knowledge had improved during the pandemic. Among them, 44% had stated that they read more books during the pandemic while 24% had reduced reading during the pandemic. Majority preferred online lectures (59%) over traditional lectures and the main reasons given were the minimum time consumption for travelling (92.3%). Majority of the students (62.4%) stated that they felt less sleepy during online lectures and 60.1% stated that they retained more facts with online lectures. 83% of the participants who stated that they felt sleepy during the online lectures still wished to continue online lectures even after the Covid Pandemic and it was statistically significant. (P =0.00) Students preferred online lectures to be more interactive and wanted a lecture note or pdf to be given prior to the lecture. Majority of the students used a smart phone and all the students zoom as their portal to online lectures. Even though 77.2% of the study population had connection interruptions during online lectures, majority of the students (67.2%) wish to have online lectures even after the COVID-19 pandemic instead of the lectures in the hall. Conclusion: Online lectures should be continued as a key part of the medical education even after social distancing restrictions are lifted and traditional lectures are resumed. Infrastructure should be improved to minimize connection interruptions.