Medicine Students' Opinions Post-COVID-19 Regarding Online Learning in Association with Their Preferences as Internet Consumers

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted e-learning as a critical component that ensured the continuity of students' education processes. In this regard, many research groups aim to provide new scientific data about the efficiency and benefits of e-learning for healthcare students. Our study aims to evaluate the attraction of e-learning among medical and dental Romanian students, in association with their preferences as internet and computer consumers. The study enrolled 551 students in medicine from four Romanian Universities of Medicine and Pharmacy, located in major cities (Iasi-64.6%, Craiova-19.6%, Timisoara-14.5% and Cluj Napoca-1.3%), mostly females (76.2%), from the first and second years of study (63.7%) or the fourth to sixth years of study (23.3%), aged 18-20 years (53.9%). To investigate their opinions about the efficiency of e-learning, we used an anonymous questionnaire with 31 items regarding advantages (17 items) and possible drawbacks (14 items). The students in medicine had favourable opinions about online learning because these tools are more comfortable (75.2%) and more flexible (60.1%). The main reasons for disagreement were the lack of direct communication and human interaction with teachers (53.2%), limitations due to the particularities of some disciplines that cannot be easily transferred to the online environment (46.4%), and the lack of proper motivation (32.5%). Older students, who liked to use multimedia resources in the learning process and used the internet mainly for information purposes or domestic facilities, had the highest scores for favourable opinions about online learning. The younger students, who did not prefer using multimedia resources in the learning process, also had the highest scores for disagreement regarding online learning. There were no statistically significant differences between genders.