Comparative evaluation of COVID-19 pandemic enforced online teaching versus traditional teaching from point of view of medical students

Background: The current ongoing coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought a sea change in education teaching learning system, ways and methodologies. Online teaching has been enforced suddenly for students worldwide. It has become a substitute to traditional teaching. Aware of the fact that the Corona pandemic has changed the way of learning teaching, we want to find out what students think about their real predispositions. This study is to compare and evaluate the opinions, preferences, experiences of undergraduate medical students during continuous online classes since the onset of Pandemic times.Methods: A sample size of 115 undergraduate medical students of batch 2019 was taken for the study done in Sardar Patel Medical College of Bikaner, Rajasthan, India in October 2020.A questionnaire was prepared using Google forms application and was filled by students online.Results: Majority of students had a preference and interest for traditional mode of teaching, they agreed on better understanding of concepts and details of topic and grasping more of knowledge through it. But majority of students also agreed that they are getting more time to study now with online teaching.Conclusions: This study gives an in depth insight into the current ongoing online teaching methodologies and throws light on changing acceptance of students to the current COVID-19 pandemic ways of teaching and on welcoming a better “blended learning” pattern in the upcoming Post COVID-19 new normal times