Revista de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento em Educação em Saúde

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Medical Students’ Learning at Copper Belt University School of Medicine and Students’ Perspective on Online Education

Abstract

Bwalya Mutale Busaka and V.M. Daka

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all aspects of our lives and caused severe disruption to everyday life around the world. And as any other sector, education has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways. The current study that focused on the impact of the COVID-19 on medical students’ leaning is essential in order to allow students and educators to evaluate the effects of the current changes the pandemic has brought to learn and apply new principles and practices to the future of the medical field by not only contributing towards the advancement of medical education in terms of curricular changes but also developing different disciplines of medicine in the country.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical students’ learning at CBU-SOM and the students’ perspective on online learning.

Methods: One hundred and twenty students (58.3% males and 41.7% females) responded to an online cross-section survey. A structural questionnaire link using ‘Google form’ was sent to students through WhatsApp in specific CBU-SOM students’ WhatsApp groups. Data collected was downloaded from Google form and imported to IBM SPSS where it was statistically analysed. Descriptive, independent sample T-test, oneway ANOVA, and logistic regression analyses were conducted.

Results: Majority of the responses indicated that students did not experience effective and constant access to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and they were not satisfied with the way it was conducted hence more disadvantages than advantages of online education were highlighted. In rating their overall online learning experience, more than 70% of respondents gave a rating of between 1 and 5 out of 10 (terrible-okay) and 54.17% indicated that they preferred face-to-face mode of teaching. Pandemic on different aspects of students' learning at the CBU-SOM. Besides, almost 70% of the respondents indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ learning in medical school. Independent sample t-test and One-way ANOVA analyses demonstrated P-value for age (0.0230), year of study (0.003) and place residing during school closures (0.002) to be less than 0.05 (Significance value) hence concluding that the respondents’ age, year of study and the place they were residing (at own home, boarding house, relatives place etc.) had a significant impact on their responses. Inferential statistical analysis (Regression) showed that P value was 0.752, thereby concluding that there was no statistically significant relationship between teaching and learning towards the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on students’ learning at CBU-SOM.

Conclusion: The study showed that COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the learning of students at CBU-SOM and that students had an unfavourable perspective on online education. However, there was no statistically significant relationship between the students’ perspective on online education and the impact of COVID-19 on medical students’ learning.