The Perception of Medical Students Towards Virtual Learning During Corona Pandemic at Faculties of Medicine at Alzaiem Alazhari and Khartoum Universities, Khartoum, 2021
Abstract Background: “Is COVID-19 pandemic the end of classical class room based education?” the most frequent question nowadays after the forced restrictions which included educational intuition lockdown، objectives, this paper aimed to study the perception of medical students towards virtual learning during COVID-19 pandemic at faculties of medicine at Alzaiem Alazhari and Khartoum universities in Sudan , 2021.Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional faculty -based study in which self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 357 medical students at faculties of medicine at Alzaiem Alazhari university and university of Khartoum. Respondents were selected using simple random sampling, and data was analyzed using SPSS 26. Results: This study revealed that the average number of hours that spent on virtual learning before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were statistically significant (p<0.05), with average of 1.9 hours per day before the pandemic and average of more than 3 hours per day during the pandemic (57.9%) .Moreover, the majority of the participants 77.9% (n=279) thought that virtual learning did not successfully replace the face to face classical teaching especially the clinical medical students 87.2% (n=312) who claimed that clinical skills cannot be taught virtually and they need the direct patient contact education in order to practice the clinical skills in a proper way.Conclusion: Virtual learning in these two medical faculties was found to be well perceived, because its pros outweighed its cons, as it was the most appropriate method to use in order to continue the education process during the pandemic.