Lived experiences of medical students of online learning: lessons for adopting virtual learning in medical education

Background: The COVID 19 lockdown created a shift in medical education from the traditional physical classroom to online learning.

Objectives: To explore the lived experiences of students in various years of medical education attending a medical college in Chennai, India.

Methods: In this qualitative exploration of lived experiences we conducted 4 focus group discussions among students of the four years in the medical college with the help of a checklist. We recorded the interviews, transcribed them and performed a thematic content analysis.

Results: There was a gendered impact of the lockdown on the online learning experiences with women students finding it challenging to attend classes balancing their gender roles of performing household chores. Online learning offered some advantages in the form of increased participation and engagement due to the partial anonymity. The greatest disadvantage of online learning was lack of clinical learning experience. The students resorted to fabricating case studies for discussion, which some students found useful and some commented that it can never replace real life clinical discussions. A generational gap between adoption of technology between the senior professors and the students hampered the online learning. Online assessments were challenging, and many students resorted to cheating in these exams.

Conclusions: Though online learning offers several advantages, it has serious limitations in offering the clinical learning experience. While planning adoption of online learning into routine medical education adequate time must be set aside for real life clinical exposure in addition to the online lectures and demonstrations for conceptual understanding.