Evaluation of problem-based learning innovation in medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study among medical students (Preprint)
BACKGROUND Most educators affected by the COVID-19 epidemic have had to find the most appropriate teaching approach to deal with this emergency teaching situation, i.e., an approach that can make good use of various teaching resources to achieve high adaptability. According to the characteristics of medical students and the course content of clinical clerkship, we adopted the problem-based learning (PBL) method to redesign the pedagogy of clerkship. At the end of the semester, the feasibility of the PBL teaching model in emergency remote teaching (ERT), which has an impact on students' learning experience and preference, was evaluated. Compared with other countries affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the outbreak time and recovery time in China are both earlier; thus, the evaluation and feedback of ERT can provide the referential evidence to global educators and institutions. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to explore medical students' learning experience in ERT to understand how these positive and negative perceptions influence their learning preferences in different teaching modes and how the PBL model combined digital technology to influence teaching quality. METHODS Among 123 medical students from Jinan University, China, who participated in the questionnaire at the end of the ERT in the clinical clerkship course, 25 volunteered to have a further in-depth interview. We randomly select five veterinary students to participate in the one-on-one in-depth online interview, which was conducted within 30 minutes. After coding of the transcription by the NVivo 12.0 software, the collected qualitative data would undergo a thematic analysis. RESULTS The thematic analysis indicated two main themes. One is that the adoption of PBL is the crucial for overseas medical students to evaluate ERT positively, and is depicted by one sub-theme: positive comment contributions. The other theme is that clinical practice as the core of medical education has a decisive influence on the teaching mode preference of medical students, as depicted by two sub-themes: negative comment contributions; and preference in different teaching methods. CONCLUSIONS Although medical students preferred an offline teaching mode due to practical requirements, they generally gave positive comments on this ERT because of the PBL method pedagogy. This indicated the feasibility of the online PBL teaching method in medical education. Moreover, medical students' preferences in the combination of the online and offline teaching mode revealed a revolutionary new direction of revolution in medical education.