Attitude and Perception of Students towards Academic Challenges of Learning Amidst COVID Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The medical education sector of India, undoubtedly being a huge part of this sector, took a big hit with the advent of the pandemic. Methodology: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted during the month of October 2020 and it involved the students pursuing health courses (MBBS) from various colleges. The inclusion criteria consisted of students pursuing MBBS course and willing to participate in the survey. The survey was conducted through electronic questionnaires with the aid of Google Forms created online. Results: The response rate was calculated as 95.31%. Before the pandemic, most of the participants (39%) spent 4-6 hours per day studying and 133 of them (50.38%) used conventional resources i.e., class lectures for the purpose of studying. In contrast, during the pandemic, the majority 42.42% of students responded as to utilizing 0-2 hours for studying and 37.5% opted for a combination of college and external resources for studying. A Wilcoxon signed rank test revealed a significant decrease in the duration of study during the pandemic. Conclusion: Our study findings show that students still prefer the traditional face-to-face lectures because of the various short comings of virtual online sessions. A big proportion of students have become the victims to the pandemic’s impact on mental health.