Conventional to virtual poster presentation in scholars’ day during coronavirus disease-19 lock down: Medical students’ performance and perspective

OBJECTIVES: The study was conducted to assess the performance regarding presentation and communication skills of the undergraduate medical students and to explore the perceptions and challenges while adopting to virtual mode of presentation held during the 1(st) wave of coronavirus disease pandemic lock down in the first ever online scholars’ day. METHODS: A mixed method research was designed, enrolling all presenters of scholars’ day, data collection was done in 2 weeks in the month of May 2020. Descriptive statistics were calculated using SPSS version 23.0. An interview guide was prepared to explore participants experience in the online e-poster competition, which took 20 min each conducted by the team of investigators, who were trained before interviews. Thematic analysis was done. RESULTS: The mean score for students’ performance was 8.9 ± 2.1. Three main themes were generated following transcription of data. These include engaging in the tedium of lockdown era, assortment of imperative material in research, Pros and Cons. CONCLUSION: E-poster presentation is an innovative method of presenting the research work of undergraduate students. It helps students to communicate at a different forum with diversity using multitude of skills, thus enhances learning. Moreover, comments by the audience and judges can provide a platform to brainstorm on research projects before these get published.