Distance Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-sectional Study Among Medical Students in Basrah (Iraq)

Background: Since the start of the outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), many countries have replaced traditional class education with distance education (DE) as a preventive measure. DE has been implemented in schools and universities, without neither prior regulations nor preparations. It has been implemented into society without the necessary skills and knowledge. Objectives: To assess the preferences of university students to courses delivered through distance education, to determine the difficulties and problems they had faced during their online study that had been adopted as a result of COVID-19 and the strengths and opportunities of such a teaching transition including the variables which contribute to positive online teaching outcomes. Method: In this study, the medical sciences students whom had been taught through distant education during COVID-19 pandemic, were questioned about their academic views, attitudes, and practices towards distant teaching due to COVID-19 and how such a teaching has influenced their study performance. The informed consent was taken from each participant student before going through the questionnaire form questions. The questionnaire form was sent through the Internet to all students in the targeted colleges, to give the same chance to all to be part of the study. Five hundred twenty three students completed the form; among them, 336 were medical college students (63.4%), and 187 students from pharmacy and dentistry colleges. The questionnaire was distributed in 12 December, 2020 using previously created students Facebook groups that were adopted by medical schools for communication with their students. Data collection completed in 31 January. It comprised 13 questions, including questions about their gender, residence, and stage of education. Results: About this study, (60%) of students have previous experience with electronic education, half of them take more than 10 lectures per week and (81%) of students said that they take lectures as recorded videos. The current experience characteristics of e-learning showed that Google Classroom has been the most frequent platform used (77%), about (55%) for Google Meet and (27%) mentioned Zoom. The participation of students in e-learning lectures was poor for students who answered that they have been attending less than (50%) of the lectures, while only (28%) of them attended more than (80%) of the lectures. Two thirds of the respondents mentioned that weakness of the Internet access had been the main reason behind the weakness of e-learning. Moreover, this quality of Internet might be a considerable reason behind students' loss of motive engage in e-learning, nearly (58%) of students reasons due to method of presenting the lectures, (30.6%) due to inappropriateness of time and only (14%) due to unavailability of the required electronic device. The Participants' satisfaction with their experience with the electronic education was about (39%) and preferring e-learning to class attendance education. Only (28%) of the respondents preferred to continue teaching medical science through electronic education even after the end of COVID-19 pandemic, while half of the students wish to combine electronic education with class attendance methods to teach medical sciences after the end of COVID-19 pandemic. In Iraq e-teaching approach needs significant upgrading, and the shortage in infrastructure requirements and poor training processes, most probably, had been the reasons behind any non-satisfying effectiveness and/or efficiency.