Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Simplified Written Contents and Complementary Contents for Pharmacology Courses of Medical Students during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Short Report

During the coronavirus pandemic, e-learning is considered an essential element in educational systems. Keeping the student's effective interaction with the pharmacology course is always a serious challenge in the virtual education of this lesson. Therefore, the current study aimed to design, implement, and evaluate the virtual teaching methods of pharmacology course among medical students.

In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 133 medical students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, who were studying pharmacology during the coronavirus pandemic in the academic year 2019-2020, were included. Then, the simplified educational content of the pharmacology course was prepared in the form of pictures along with explanatory clouds and summary tables and uploaded to the learning management system (NAVID). Supplementary written content, which complemented the educational clips of each class session, was provided to the students in order to summarize the topic and learn better. After finishing the class, an online questionnaire was completed by the students, and the data were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and independent t-test.

There were 66 (49.6%) students of 2017 entrance and 67 students (50.4%) of 2018 entrance. The satisfaction level of the students after the evaluation through the questionnaire regarding the supplementary educational method was significantly higher than the simplified method (p<0.001). There was observed no significant difference in the level of satisfaction from both methods based on grade point average and age (p<0.05).

The design and implementation of simplified educational methods in the course of pharmacology was accompanied with satisfaction of students in online education in the time of coronavirus pandemic.