Background: Online virtual lectures have the advantages of mass communication from any location and can be recorded and repeated as long as computers and internet access are available. The medical students here had never been offered online virtual lectures until now. Taking the advantages of online virtual teaching and the need of the hour, the present study was conducted with the following aims and objectives.
Aims and Objectives: To study, evaluate and compare the effectiveness and satisfaction of students in two modalities of teaching-learning (T-L) technique (1) face to face classroom lectures versus (2) virtual online lectures.
Material and Methods: The present observational study was conducted in 93 undergraduate medical students of the second year. A series of 10 face to face classroom lectures and then a series of 10 virtual online lectures were conducted on different topics of forensic medicine and toxicology at a frequency of 1 lecture/week. A well-designed and -structured questionnaire was forwarded to the students through Google form. The students could fill in the form and submit only if willing. The statistical analysis of the descriptive variables was expressed as mean ± SD and percentage separately. The comparison of the variables for both modalities of T-L technique was done by unpaired - t test.
Results: The attendance of the students was highly significantly increased in online virtual lectures as compared to face to face classroom lectures. The impact of online virtual lectures on knowledge, the connectivity with the teacher, attentiveness, and satisfaction grades as experienced by students and rated on a 5 point Likert scale was statistically significantly low as compared to face to face classroom lectures. The online virtual lectures were experienced as significantly more monotonous as compared to face to face classroom lectures.
Conclusion: After so many years of pedagogical nature of medical education, the students will require time to adapt to the self-directed learning protocol. It is the role of the educator to keep the students motivated and use multimedia and social media to make the online virtual lectures more interesting, informative, interactive, and hence more effective.
Key words: Comparative; Evaluation; Face to Face; Lectures; Virtual
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