Perspectives toward e-learning system during Covid-19 pandemic among medical Colleagues, Egypt: A Cross-sectional survey

Abstract Background: WHO declared the outbreak of COVID-19, which affected the educational system stopping it in Egypt. To maintain the educational process, E-learning was a suggested solution. This study aimed to assess students' satisfaction regarding e-learning experience and effectiveness of this system on medical education in Egyptian universities. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among medical schools in Egypt during 2020–2021. It was conducted through an online questionnaire composed of four sections: Demographic characteristics, quality of internet connection, the academic characteristics of the participants, and evaluation of the effectiveness of e-learning. We compared the effectiveness of e learning among the clinical and the academic students, and private and governmental universities. Results: Among 90592 medical students in Egypt, 6393 students from 28 universities filled out the questionnaire with a 96.6% response rate. The age of participants ranged from 16 to 29 years old. Also, about 59.3% of them were females. The blended e-learning was the most applied by universities (43.1%), followed by partial type (33.4%), and full type (23.6%). About 73.7% of students had "always/often" constant internet connection. Forty percent of students were "dissatisfied/not satisfied at all", 38.3% showed "neutral" satisfaction, while 21.7% were "satisfied or highly satisfied". There was a significant difference regarding internet connection and availability favoring urban areas compared to rural areas (p<0.001). There was a significant difference favoring the academic education over the clinical education regarding the effectiveness of online learning (p<0.01) and private education over governmental regarding the effectiveness of online learning (p<0.001). Conclusion: E-learning was better for academic education than for clinical education. It was better for private universities than governmental ones. Also, students in rural areas had worse availability and quality internet connection compared with those in urban areas.