Does the Teaching Modality and Exam Proctoring Setting Influence Pre-Clinical Medical Students’ Performance? A Retrospective Cohort Study of Student Performance in Remote Versus Face-to-Face Setting, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

OBJECTIVES: The intent of this study is to compare the academic performance of pre-clinical medical students in online teaching with online proctoring settings versus face-to-face (F2F) teaching with traditional F2F exam proctoring settings. INTRODUCTION: In 2019, the world was faced with a rapidly progressive pandemic of COVID-19. Consequently, numerous institutions have opted to transform from the traditional F2F teaching method to an online modality, ensuring the safety of their students and maintaining the effectiveness of their educational programs. In particular, medical universities faced a unique challenge in creating a new learning system due to their atypical curriculum, which often involves hands-on training and is not easily adaptable to remote teaching. METHODS: The core of this study is based on the scores of first-year undergraduate medical students across three academic years from the Mohamed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dubai (MBRU), United Arab Emirates (UAE). Course and semester grades were collected and compared in both F2F and online teaching modalities as well as exam settings. RESULTS: Our results show that major courses with high-credit courses had no difference in students’ performance regardless of the teaching modality, and in low-credit courses, students generally did better in the online teaching modality. Regarding exam settings, no significant difference was observed in students’ performance. CONCLUSION: With few studies examining the variations between F2F and online teaching, the current study in the UAE is the first study comparing academic performance during the COVID-19 era. Our findings illustrate no significant difference between both online and traditional F2F learning. Therefore, given the considerable potential of alternative teaching modalities, future studies are encouraged to explore the efficacy of online learning and proctoring methods.