Medical student's perception of face-­to-face and virtual educational environment during covid-19 pandemic in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS)

A positive educational environment creates a welcoming environment that boosts satisfaction, well-being, academic success and collaboration among students, teachers and organizations which in return produces quality graduates. Knowing these effects, it is no doubt about the need for an organization to evaluate its educational environment. However, with the advancement of technology, it is now not only face-to-face teaching and learning activities that need a good educational environment. There is also a need to look into the virtual educational environment as more teaching and learning activities, including medical education, are being undertaken online especially during pandemic. The aim of this study is to explore the physical and virtual educational enviromnent condition in Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) from medical students' perspectives during COVID-19 pandemic. A cross­sectional study was carried out with the target population of all medical students from year one to year five in FMHS, UMS (n=456). The perception of students toward their educational environment was measured using the shortened version of Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM-17) and Online Student Connectedness Survey (OSCS-25) questionnaires. The quantitative data was analysed using SPSS version 28. Ethical approvals were obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of both universities, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and UMS, where the study was conducted. A total of 329 out of 456 medical students responded (72.1 %). The students' perception of physical educational enviromnent was above average or more positive than negative with a mean score of 2.93 (SO= 0.76). While students' perception of online connectedness in virtual learning was also above average or moderate with a mean score of 2.60 (SO = 0.79). There is no significant difference in perception of both physical and virtual educational environment between sex of respondents but there is a significant difference between pre-clinical and clinical year students where the latter perceived lesser in the virtual educational environment. The study findings conclude that medical students in FMHS, UMS perceived a better physical educational enviromnent compared to a virtual one indicates their preferability for physical or blended learning instead of fully online learning in medical education, especially among clinical year medical students. Lower perception of support system in students' well-being suggests the need for further evaluation on the implementation and effectiveness of the current students' support system in FMHS, UM