Online learning during the COVID pandemic lockdown: A cross sectional study among medical students

Introduction: We aimed to find out how medical students coped with online learning at home during the COVID 19 pandemic 'lockdown'. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out from July to December 2020, using an online SurveyMonkey Questionnaire (R), with four sections: biodata; learning environment; study habits; open comments; sent to 1359 students of the International Medical University, Malaysia. Responses of strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree and strongly agree for the closed-ended questions on the learning environment and study habits, were scored on a 5-point Likert scale. Percentages of responses were obtained for the closed ended questions.Results: There were 323 (23.8%) responses. This included 207 (64%) students from the preclinical semesters 1 - 5 and 116 (36%) students from clinical semesters 6 - 10. Of the respondents, more than 90% had the necessary equipment, 75% had their own personal rooms to study, and 60% had satisfactory internet connections. Several demotivating factors (especially, monotony in studying) and factors that disturbed their studies (especially, tendency to watch television) were also reported.Conclusion: Although more than 90% of those who responded had the necessary equipment for online learning, about 40% had inadequate facilities for online learning at home and only 75% had personal rooms to study. In addition, there were factors that disturbed and demotivated their online studies.