Perception of Undergraduate Dental Students About the Advantages and Disadvantages of Distance Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives :

The present study aimed to assess the dental students' perception about distance education during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Methods :

An analytical cross-sectional study was done on 288 dental students from Shahid Beheshti and Mashhad Universities of Medical sciences in February 2022. A standardized, electronic questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaire included a comparison of pros and cons of distance and in-person education and the NAVID system with online video lectures. The content validity of the questionnaire was assessed by qualitative and quantitative validation tools. The Chi-square test was used to compare the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning. Online video lectures and the NAVID system were compared by the Wilcoxon signed rank test.

Results:

 Totally, 288 students (141 females and 147 males) completed the online questionnaire. Instant access to online sources was the most essential advantage of e-learning (74.7%), and the most critical disadvantages were lack of student-tutor (50.5%) and student-student interactions (50%). The NAVID system was easier to use than the online video lectures. The online classes were less successful in building student-tutor interactions compared with in-person classes. The NAVID system received more scores in fulfilling the students' expectations about the quality of conveying the concepts and learning.

Conclusion :

The sudden shift from in-person to distance learning has caused some educational problems and lowered the student-student and student-tutor interaction quality. However, optimizing the infrastructure and necessary facilities for online education would help obviate the students' academic needs.