Online educational methods vs. traditional teaching of anatomy during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim of the present study was to determine the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on anatomy teaching to medical and dental students comparing the traditional anatomy teaching with three remote teaching modalities. A cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate medical and dental students of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Four hundred and twenty students who attended anatomy classes during COVID-19 outbreak in Greece, were asked to fill in a questionnaire of 22 questions evaluating the formats of the different courses provided. Each student was asked to complete the questionnaire anonymously via the Google Forms (R) platform. A total of 200 students participated. During the lockdown, 59.5% of students attended all online anatomy lectures compared to 44.5% in the pre-pandemic year. Overall, the higher percentage of 73.5% was satisfied with the traditional anatomy teaching, instead of 56% which were satisfied with the effectiveness of online anatomy lectures. Asking whether any remote educational method can partially or completely replace the traditional anatomy teaching, the majority of students replied "no" for all the three remote modalities. The traditional anatomy teaching remains the most preferred and effective teaching modality. The students ranked online anatomy lectures and pre-recorded anatomy lectures in second place in terms of effectiveness and preference. The development of remote learning methods has increased students' active participation in anatomy lessons, but significantly negatively affected the students' performance at exams. Remote learning cannot replace the traditional anatomy teaching method, but online lectures could be incorporated into anatomy curricula as an additional tool.