An overview and analogy of pedagogical approaches in online–offline teaching tactics in COVD-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Learning helps acquire knowledge or skills. COVID-19 outbreak severely affected the progress of education all across the globe. Pandemic-induced alternative methods of teaching promoted the progress of online education. Hence, this study is undertaken to assess an overview of teaching learning strategies in the COVID-19 pandemic so as to explore the direction of medical education and help perk up the teaching learning methods in medical education. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The cross-sectional study involves first year medical undergraduate students of 2020–2021 batch studying at Dr.VMGMC, Solapur. It involves complete enumeration of students of 2020-2021 batch. Due to the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic hematology, classes were continued and completed by the same faculty by online live teaching using Microsoft teams. As this being an online survey, it was ethically exempted. A comparison of questionnaires between offline and online classes was done by using χ(2)test and a P value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Quantitative data generated by the dichotomous question and five-point Likert scale questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequency analysis. Out of 189 respondents, majority of students preferred traditional offline classes over online classes. Self-directed learning was feasible in both methods of teaching. DISCUSSION: Traditional offline classes were more interactive and enthusiastic than online classes. Offline classes helped students to revise, recollect, and reproduce necessary information as their attention span was better in offline teaching than online teaching. CONCLUSION: Holistic understanding and better learning were experienced through traditional offline classes. Although teachers take double efforts for online teaching, the overall learning effect and impact of traditional offline classes were much better than online classes. It definitely motivates andrgaogy and helps understand the concept on their own.