ONLINE LEARNING AT MEDICAL SCHOOLS

Abstract

The constraints related to the COVID-19 pandemics have hindered the education of more than a million medical students all over the world, taking online learning to a new level. The results of many months of online learning require preliminary generalization. The main problems considered in our review are: (a) adaptation of students and teachers to the new conditions (including diagnostics and prevention of adverse consequences of online learning on mental and somatic health); (b) the problem of online lectures and classes attendance; (c) assessment of students’ knowledge during tests and exams (and how to fight with cheating); (d) finding an optimal balance between traditional and online teaching methods in the post pandemic period; e) urgent retraining of the teachers (especially older ones) in the field of IT; (f) development of fundamentally new forms of education (in terms of timing, content, methods etc.) instead of recording lectures and classes. By the time the next pandemic begins, if and when it does, medical school must be armed with a completely different set of pedagogical methodology than the one that has been created over the past two centuries... This review summarizes the facts obtained both before and during the coronavirus pandemic. The advantages and disadvantages of online learning are compared in two situations: (a) as an addition to the traditional educational process and (b) as the main or the only form of education. We hope that the results discussed here might help teachers to create more effective approaches to the problem of online education for medical students.