The perceptions of anatomy teachers for different majors during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national Chinese survey

ABSTRACT

During the spring semester of 2020, medical school anatomists in China were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to transition from face-to-face educators or part-time online educators to full-time online educators. This nationwide survey was conducted to assess online anatomy education during the pandemic for medical students from nonclinical medicine and clinical medicine majors at medical schools in China via WeChat. The total of 356 responders included 293 responders from clinical medicine and 63 respondents from nonclinical medicine majors (i.e., 21 from preventive medicine, 13 from stomatology, and 29 from traditional Chinese medicine). The survey results showed that several aspects of online anatomy education were quite similar in clinical and nonclinical majors’ classes, including theoretical and practical sessions, active learning, assessments and evaluations. However, there were statistically significant differences in class size, implementation of active learning activities prior to the pandemic, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of online learning during the pandemic, between clinical and nonclinical medicine majors. These results indicated that, compared with teachers of anatomy courses in clinical medicine, teachers of nonclinical medicine majors using online learning in medical schools in China had relatively poor preparation for online learning in response to the unforeseen pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Anatomy education online
• active learning
• assessment
• evaluation
• clinical and nonclinical medicine
• COVID-19 pandemic

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to sincerely thank all of the survey respondents who helped to complete this survey during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the grant of China Association of Higher Education [2020JXYB08] and the Pedagogical Reform of Clinical Teaching and Practice at Guangdong Province [grant numbers 2019JD037].

Notes on contributors

Yu Yan

Yu Yan is a doctoral (Ph.D.) student in the Division of Histology and Embryology, Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine of the Ministry of Education, School of Medicine at Jinan University, Guangzhou, PR China.

Xin Cheng

Xin Cheng is an associate professor in the Division of Histology and Embryology, Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine of the Ministry of Education, School of Medicine at Jinan University, Guangzhou, PR China.

Changman Zhou

Changman Zhou is a professor in Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Peking University Health ScienceCenter, Beijing, PR China.

Xuesong Yang

Xuesong Yang is a professor in the Division of Histology and Embryology, Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine of the Ministry of Education, School of Medicine at Jinan University, Guangzhou, PR China.

Yun-Qing Li

Yun-Qing Li is a professor in Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, K.K. Leung Brain Research Centre, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, PR China.