Distance medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Faculty of Medecine of Batna 2 University in Algeria

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the use of distance education (DE). This study aims to describe the impact of the DE on the completion of training programs, the teachers’ opinion on the measures taken, and finally the students’ perception of the ADE they received in this context. Methods: This is a descriptive study that took place in 2 steps: a description of the measures implemented by Batna Medical Faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic with an evaluation of the teachers' perception of these measures by a self-administered questionnaire, and an evaluation of thestudents’ perception of DE given during this period by a self-administered questionnaire created on Google Forms and distributed to students via Facebook. The data were analyzed with Epi info 7. Results: Of the 50 teachers participating in the DE initiation workshops, 64% found them as very useful and 96% recommended them to their colleagues. Out of the 535 students who responded to the online questionnaire, the DE forms received were: course materials on the faculty’s website (70.8%), videoconferences (50.1%) and videos (49.3%). The usefulness of videoconferences is evaluated according to students at 2.46 ± 0.055, for videos at 2.49 ± 0.052 and for chats and discussion forums at 2.18 ± 0.056. More than 70% of students prefer to follow an online teaching in addition to teaching face. Conclusion: The use of Information and Communication Technologies for Education (ICTE) during this pandemic will allow us to initiate, develop and even perfect the DE