Online Teaching During COVID-19 Pandemic Challenges and the Solutions

Abstract

Background: Covid-19 Pandemic has affected the human life to the highest extremes in every aspect, and education system is one among it. During lockdowns all educational institutes were closed to limit the spread. This period gave the boost to online education which was a total new paradigm shift both for faculty and students. Medical colleges were also dealing with this urgent shift and it was a challenging task to cover all the knowledge, skills and attitude domains in online education. This study has been designed to assess the experience of faculty for online teaching. Objective: The objective of this study was to explore the online teaching experiences of medical /dental faculty during this paradigm shift. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Settings: Faculty of Faisalabad Medical University, Faisalabad Pakistan. Duration: One month from April 2020 to May 2020. Methods: One hundred four (104) faculty members contributed to volunteer participation in the study. They were informed about the purpose of the study and were free to participate. After ethical approval, a validated Google form questionnaire was filled by the participant and it was analyzed on SPSS version 20. Results: The majority (76%) of the participants were from the clinical sciences departments, and the rest (24%) belonged to the basic sciences. 59% was aged 30-40 years, 15% between 41-50 years, and 25% in the range of 51-60 years. Most of the respondents (45%) had the teaching experience of fewer than five years. Using of online platforms, Zoom topped with 74%, Google Classroom stood second with a 4.8% response. Skype and other media were less than 1%. Most of the faculty (68%) started online teaching from April 2020, whereas the remaining 32% had been doing since March 2020 (before the formal training sessions). Furthermore, 38% of the members showed interest to continue online teaching as a supporting tool even after the lockdown and 24% didn’t agreed. Around 37% of the participants were unsure if they were comfortable with it or not. Previous online teaching experience was 81%, and 45% attended workshops on the use of online teaching methods. 55.8% found it challenging to convert teaching material for online classes. As per teachers’ response 77.9% of their students’ encountered problems during online classes, and only 61.5 % were satisfied. 76% found it less useful than face to face sessions. Conclusion: This study will be helpful for the medical institutes while planning any learning management system (LMS) as a supportive learning management tool in future while moving to blended education.