Ten researchers with affiliations in public and private medical schools in Egypt, the United States and Afghanistan collaborated in the study, along with 23 members of the Egyptian Medical Education Collaborative Group (EGY MedEd).
The study included an opinion poll that was distributed to students in 26 medical schools across Egypt and received 4,935 responses. The study estimates there are a total of 70,000 students studying medicine in Egypt, which has 31 colleges of medicine, according to the World Directory of Medical Schools.
Mohamed Mortagy, a professor at the School of Medicine at Newgiza University and the study’s lead researcher, said the research aimed to explore the effectiveness of different e-learning methods and to review the opportunities and difficulties that students faced in studying via the Internet.
The students who participated responded to questions on an online survey on Google Forms. The students were asked about their experiences with online medical education, as well as their anxiety, perceived academic performance, and any obstacles they encountered.
A Mix of Positive and Negative Views
The results showed that the majority of students (64.6 percent) thought online education was better than face-to-face education, but more than half (54.6 percent) said online education was not as effective as face-to-face education, and only 43.7 percent said they enjoyed online medical education.
Fifty-one percent said they preferred the traditional way of learning, while 44 percent said that their professors “were not well prepared for online education.”
Forty-five percent of the respondents said they had encountered Internet-related problems, such as connection or speed issues, and over half wanted online sessions to be more interactive.
Among other negative experiences, 35 percent said online medical education was not motivating, 37 percent said they had difficulty participating in online sessions, and 41 percent felt they were not able to ask questions freely in remote study sessions.
However, 63 percent of students agreed that video lessons recorded online (on YouTube) were the most effective form of online medical education.
‘Inherent Barriers’