The following is a good listing of these pros and cons of online education:. Convenience: This convenience is in relation to study location, time, course duration, etc.
Less Expensive: Generally these courses cost less than regular classroom academic or trade school course. Technology: You can work on the course just about anywhere you have computer access. Online courses provide an opportunity to learn new technologies and practicing the use of office software, Internet, etc. Limited Social Interaction: There is a limited opportunities to interact face-to-face to professors and other students. Effectiveness of Assessment: Most educators agree that memory testing is not the best measure of learning in any environment, but classroom tools are difficult to apply.
It is difficult to measure program results. Question remains: are students learning what instructor is saying that they should be learning? Students can take classes from a college or university nowhere near their home and get an education experience not available to them locally. Students who travel with a job can take a class in a house, hotel room or coffee shop.
Students save on housing, gas money and travel expenses. However, an online education means face-to-face instruction does not exist, nor does the ability to get instant feedback on class assignments in many situations. An advantage of a classroom Internet connection allows students to take a virtual field trip without ever leaving their school building. Students studying the animals of Africa, the Great Wall of China or the Egyptian pyramids, for example, never have to get on a plane.
For schools struggling with budgets and for schools in rural locations, going to an online museum or virtual zoo gives them a unique opportunity they might not otherwise have without Internet access.
The Internet allows students to meet people from all over the world at the click of a button. Faculty members and students said that through online learning modalities they were unable to teach and learn practical and clinical work. They could only teach and assess knowledge component. The students also reported limited attention span and resource intensive nature of online learning as a limitation.
Some teachers also mentioned that during online study, students misbehaved and tried to access online resources during assessments. Teachers and students suggested continuous faculty development. They recommended a reduction in cognitive load and increased interactivities during online teaching. Those in clinical years suggested ways to start online Case Based Learning. However, some were also of the opinion that there should be revision classes along with psychomotor hands on teaching after the COVID pandemic is under control.
To enhance quality, they suggested buying premium software and other proctoring software to detect cheating and plagiarism. The current study reported advantages, limitations and recommendations to improve online learning during lockdown of institutions due to COVID pandemic.
According to the teachers and students, online learning is a flexible and effective source of teaching and learning as most of them agreed upon the fact that this helps in distant learning with easy administration and accessibility along with less use resource and time.
Regardless of time limit, students can easily access the learning material. This flexibility over face to face teaching has been reported in the literature as well. Both the faculty members and students viewed inefficiency to teach psychomotor skills, resource intensiveness and mismanaged decorum during sessions as limitations of online learning.
Even though, hands-on sessions such as laboratory and clinical skills teaching have been disrupted during COVID pandemic, we believe that online simulated patients or role plays can be used teach history taking, clinical reasoning and communication skills. Sharing recorded videos of laboratory and clinical skills demonstration is also worthwhile.
Research showed that regular two-way feedback helps enhance self-efficacy and motivation. Government should also take immediate measures and telecommunication companies should invest in expanding its 4G services across the country. Recommendations reflect that decorum can be maintained by thorough supervision of students, setting ground rules for online interaction, counselling and disciplinary actions.
Faculty needs training and students orientation in using online learning tools. As the study participants belonged to the medical and dental college from a single private-sector university of Punjab, therefore the findings are only applicable to similar contexts.
For generalizability, a survey based on our findings should be conducted across the province or country. Despite the limitations, the findings offer an understanding of the advantages, limitations and recommendations for improvement in online learning, which is the need of the day.
E-learning modalities encourage student-centered learning and they are easily manageable during this lockdown situation. It is worth considering here that currently online learning is at a nascent stage in Pakistan. There is a need to train faculty on the use of online modalities and developing lesson plan with reduced cognitive load and increased interactivities.
AS and MA conceived the idea , designed the study and are responsible for integrity of research. All the authors contributed towards data analysis and writing the manuscript and approved the final version. The authors would like to acknowledge the participants for their time and contributions. Conflict of interest: None. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Pak J Med Sci. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer.
Correspondence: Dr. Email: kp. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Methods: This qualitative case study was conducted from March to April Results: The advantages included remote learning, comfort, accessibility, while the limitations involved inefficiency and difficulty in maintaining academic integrity.
Conclusion: The current study supports the use of online learning in medical and dental institutes, considering its various advantages. Table-I Participant characteristics. Open in a separate window. But hands on training is not possible, the student will not be able to understand properly. We lose our concentration and the syllabus is so lengthy.
Plagiarism As this system is new to everyone, it is difficult to have individual assessment.
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