Medical Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic; is E-learning a Precursor to a New Blended Education System?

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has quickly spread worldwide and declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020.This pandemic with resulted radical changes in many aspects of our lives had a huge impacts on the global population, health care systems, economy and education.Advice for strict social distancing resulted in the closure of educational institutions and online education has suddenly become the main route of education worldwide.Likewise, Turkey has decided immediately to begin online education on March 23, 2020. However, this has been somewhat problematic for medical education which has traditionally relied on face to face learning and laboratory skills more than other educations. In addition, this exchange was established quickly resulting in challenges about use of technology tools or time management.We tried to search about the difference between public and private universities and the opinions of both types of medical faculity students regarding online education, and how effective online education is in the medical education during this healthcare crisis. by using a self administered questionnaire.This survey study showed that the students have different perspectives towards the online education but, regardless of being state or private university students, it can be said that many students are unpleased with the online education.However, it can also be said that students from public universities seem more likely to want to study online after the COVID-19 crisis and foundation/private university students are more likely to want to return to the face-to-face education. As the situation is still progressing, it is too early to decide whether a new co-education system will emerge, that includes both face-to-face and online classes, or whether it is advisible to revert to the traditional methods if online learning fails.