Student academic performance in non-lecture physiology topics following the abrupt change from traditional on-site teaching to online teaching during COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Background

During the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-clerkship medical education, including all physiology classes, was obliged to change to online teaching due to limitations of on-site (face-to-face) classes. However, the effectiveness of online teaching in non-lecture physiology topics during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been thoroughly investigated.

Method

We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the students’ academic achievement and opinions on online teaching during the COVID-19 academic year. Academic achievement of 312 students in the COVID-19 year was compared with that of 299 students in the pre-COVID-19 year. Student opinions regarding social interactions and the preferred learning method were also collected.

Results

We found that student academic achievement in the non-lecture physiology topics, assessed by summative scores, was 4.80±0.92 percent higher in the pre-COVID-19 year than in the COVID-19 year (P < 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.42). Students rated that online classes tended to reduce their interactions with peers and teachers; however, students preferred online learning over traditional on-site learning.

Conclusions

This study pointed out that students’ academic performance related to the physiology topics taught by online non-lecture methods during the COVID-19 pandemic was lower than their performance when the topics were taught by the traditional (on-site) methods, although students reported that they preferred the online teaching. Hence, we suggest that medical teachers should deliberately plan and utilise a variety of tools and techniques when developing online non-lecture classes to preserve the interactivity of the classes, which might overcome this gap in students’ academic performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic performance
• COVID-19
• non-lecture based teaching
• online learning
• physiology
• pre-clerkship education
• student opinion
• undergraduate medical education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank senior medical teachers in the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, who had developed teaching materials and helped teach physiology in both academic years of the study, namely Emeritus Prof. Dr. Bungorn Chomdej, Emeritus Prof. Dr. Ratree Sudsuang, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chanvit Kotheeranurak. We also thank Dr. Tanat Tabtieang, Dr. Kornvalee Meesilpavikkai, Dr. Thachamai Smitasiri, Dr. Namthip Witayavanitkul, and Dr. Natthawan Sanguanwong for assessing the questionnaire and general feedbacks. We thank Dr. Sawitree Boonpatcharanon for the advice on statistical analysis and Asst. Prof. Dr. Danai Wangsaturaka for the feedback relating to medical education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.