Medical Students' Attitude Toward E-learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has greatly impressed medical education by shifting traditional educational methods to e-learning. Objectives: This study evaluated the undergraduate medical students' attitudes toward e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic Methods: This cross-sectional study included undergraduate medical students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran, in the academic year 2020 - 21 by census sampling method, whose attitude toward e-learning was evaluated based on the Ghanizadeh et al. scale. Categorical variables were demonstrated with frequency and percentage, and quantitative variables were described using the mean and standard deviation. An independent-sample t test was run to study the hypothesis. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to compare pre-clinical and clinical groups' attitudes toward e-learning after gender control. Statistical analyses were performed by SPSS 23. Results: The study enrolled 528 undergraduate medical students. The findings indicated that 85.4% of the students agreed with the necessity of more effective e-learning in medical education, and 95.5% believed that e-learning should play a complementary role in medical education. It was found that clinical students had a marginally statistically significantly better attitude toward e-learning than pre-clinical students (t = -2.04, df = 526, P = 0.041). Nevertheless, no significant difference was observed between the two groups after gender control (t = 2.87, P = 0.091). It was shown that males had more positive attitudes toward e-learning than females (t = 2.28, df = 526, P = 0.023). Conclusions: The results revealed acceptable attitudes toward e-learning. Although many students declared e-learning's usefulness and confirmed its complementary role in medical education, some announced that it could not replace in-person training.