Acta Medica Iranica
Volume:60 Issue: 8, Aug 2022

Education is the only industry in the pandemic era in most countries, even developing countries, has been wholly transferred to the online mode. Although virtual-learning is the best way to continue education during an epidemic, developing countries face challenges. This study aimed to determine the challenges of virtual education in developing countries. The PRISMA guideline was followed in this review, with seven databases searched: Scopus, ISI, ScienceDirect, Emerald, Pubmed, Ovid SP, and Google Scholar. The query "(virtual-learning OR E-Learning OR online learning) AND (challenges))" was used to retrieve records in the fields of title, keywords, and abstract without any date restrictions in order to achieve as many articles on this topic as possible. Then the references of each article were backward-tracked and searched in Google Scholar to identify extra potentially relevant articles. Three hundred and twenty-five records were retrieved from the literature search on January 9, 2021, with 56 retained after removing duplicates. After a detailed screening and selection process, 32 articles were selected. The results showed that the most critical virtual-learning challenges in developing countries were in six Items 1. Technical (Lack of proper telecommunications infrastructure, Lack of necessary electronic standards, hardware and software, reduced information security) 2. Cultural (attitude of second-rate education. 3. Virtual-learning skills (unfamiliarity with the virtual-learning environment, low hardware, and software literacy) 4. Socio-psychiatric factor (fear and anxiety in facing the virtual-learning environment, Distractions) 5. Quality of (education, difficulty in assessing the quality of learning, Lack of effective student-teacher interaction (6. Ethical (information plagiarism, Lack of intellectual property rights, and copyright law) were why most e-learners and e-tutors in developing countries were dissatisfied with virtual learning. According to the results, to overcome these challenges, it is necessary to create infrastructure and technology standards and use the experiences of developed countries concerning virtual-learning. In addition, it is necessary to create an appropriate culture and familiarize professors and learners with the development and use of a virtual-learning system while maintaining ethics.

This study reviews articles published in the last two decades to determine the pros and cons of virtual outpatient education for undergraduate medical students and residents. A review of articles published between 2001 and 2021 in PubMed, Scopus, ERIC, and google scholar databases. Keywords for this search were: Ambulatory care/Outpatient clinics and education, and medical/internship and residency. The emphasis of this study was on the implementation of any kind of E-learning in outpatient clinics. Out of 5100 in the initial monitoring, 168 articles were reviewed based on the full text. Finally, information on 11 articles was extracted. Results were summarized in 4 areas: methods and tools used in e-learning, benefits of e-learning, challenges and limitations of e-learning, and student support. The main methods used were telemedicine via video conferencing and telephone calls, especially for residents. Other were virtual clinics with a simulated patient, as well as online educational modules. The main preponderances were: increasing knowledge and skills of telemedicine, improving medical knowledge and skills, access to educational resources even during patients visit, the possibility of learning at any time and place, and betterment of the quality of care. The main challenges were lack of technological literacy and lack of Internet access for some patients, time-consuming entry of patient information for students, reduction of clinical experiences, the unfeasibility of acquiring full skills in performing physical examinations, or some technical and procedural skills and hardware/software technological problems. Regarding student support, the main activity includes holding orientation sessions on new approaches for trainees. Due to the urgency of using virtual outpatient education in the corona era, it is predicted that in the post-corona era, we will see a tendency to use this method by stakeholders. Certainly, citing the results of original articles and reviewing them, similar to the present study, can make it possible to implement qualified E-learning innovation in clinics with quality in the future.

Technology provides many opportunities in distance education in the field of dentistry, while the need to use the most appropriate educational methods is well defined. The purpose of this study was to investigate the application of new technologies in dental education. This study was a review study by undertaking PRISMA guidelines that were performed by reviewing relevant texts by searching the databases of PubMed, Springer link, ProQuest, Wiley Scopus, Science Direct, and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria included original and non-original articles related to the technology in dental education from 2016 to 2020. Finally, 23 studies were presented as the final sample of review, analysis, and results in the form of tables. Analysis of 23 studies showed that technologies such as digital simulation and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) combined with haptic technology could be very useful for teaching skills. Based on these studies, distance education 34.7% (n=8), dental technology 30.4% (n=7), VR & AR 17.3% (n=4), mobile learning8% (n=2), serious games 4% (n=1), and blended learning 4% (n=1) have been evaluated useful and effective in dental education. Technology offers many opportunities for teaching and learning solutions. Therefore, dental schools should use technology to support clinical and theoretical education. Digital assessment gadgets in restorative dentistry and dentures allow students to evaluate their performance in real time without direct surveillance.

Medical grand rounds as a key teaching exercise originating from the bedside rounds conducted by prominent clinicians. Traditional (face-to-face) Ground Rounds have been robust in medical education that can update students 'information and help students' clinical decisions in treating their patients. Due to the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its effects on different aspects of life, including education, most medical universities have begun to use online education as a new way to provide medical education, and online classes have become one of the common teaching methods. Virtual Grand Round sessions were implemented to facilitate continuity of care. Implementing virtual grand rounds during the pandemic period and considering the results and effectiveness from the perspective of students as direct benefactors can provide a good understanding of the potential of this method of e-learning. This article provides an overview of which medical disciplines have used the virtual Grand Round program for education during the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the benefits and results.

The complexity of today's world is constantly creating new challenges for higher education institutions, and they must continually be consistent and accountable to maintain standards of excellence and compete in international education markets. Being or becoming an entrepreneurial higher education institution is a response to these challenges. There is no "unique" approach, but there are different ways in which higher education institutions behave in an entrepreneurial and creative way. The purpose of this article was to explain how universities can become more entrepreneurial by changing how they provide knowledge. This article is based on the results of a literature review in the fall and winter of 2020 and is in line with the doctoral dissertation that is currently being done in the "Virtual School, Medical Education and Management, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences." After 1989, a review of the limited, focused literature on service innovation, with an emphasis on knowledge-based service innovation, was done. Service innovation is multidimensional and interactive in nature and can be examined from both technological (information and communication technology developments) and non-technological (organizational innovations) aspects. Accordingly, knowledge-based services include services based on professional knowledge and technology knowledge. Universities need to focus on innovation in both aspects of knowledge-based services. If universities are to become entrepreneurial universities, it is important to explain the comprehensive model of entrepreneurial universities by focusing on the dimensions, concepts, opportunities, challenges, and requirements for knowledge service innovation and then apply it to medical universities to fits their needs.

This study tries to review the experience of universities in detecting patterns that have been followed in holding Grand Rounds by them and achieving the set of factors needed to hold this event with high quality. In this literature review study, 268 titles of English articles were collected between 1960 and 2021 in the international databases of Cochrane, ERIC, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Embase, and Web of Science. The keywords included "Grand Round," "Medical Grand Round," "Virtual Grand Round," and "digital Grand Round." Based on the PISISMA diagram guide, after "quality review," eight articles remained in the study. Traditional content analysis methods were used to extract data, which was then inductively classified as a four-phase-ADDIE model, which includes Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Evaluation. In other words, the ADDIE model is used as a guide in determining the quality status of the virtual grand design of other studies. The analysis is always one of the main phases of the ADDIE model, so the information in this main theme was essentially divided into two sub-themes: "teaching facilities" and "conditions," in which all the measures are taken to assess the feasibility of the course were included. In the "implementation" theme, just one article described the complete format of holding a virtual grand round, emphasizing the teaching method, case type, and presentation platform. In the "evaluation" theme, all eight articles evaluated the results of the virtual course in some way using student perspectives. A deeper review of the experiences showed that no specific and complete instructional design model was used to design and implement this program. In this review, it was found that the documented experiences regarding holding this program in virtual mode are very limited. Besides, the lack of applying an instructional model effectively makes the citation challenges.

This systematic review investigates various evaluation tools for digital educational games and answers the question of which evaluation tools could be used to evaluate digital educational games. A systematic review of studies, by searching for related keywords in the title, abstract, and keywords of studies in the scientific databases EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, was launched without time-limited on November 2, 2021. The same checklist was used to extract data such as reference, first author's name, year of publication, tool name, type of tool, instructional strategy, and evaluation factors. A total of 3516 articles were extracted and finally, an analysis of the included studies gave us 22 different approaches to the systematic evaluation of educational games. The same study developed some proprietary evaluation tools exclusively for game evaluation. However, some tools evaluated games in different dimensions, most of which did not consider the tool's validity. In the same sense, we have five prominent evaluation guidelines, including E-GESS, MEEGA+, EGameFlow, HEP, and Kato evaluation guideline, all of which have been developed by explicitly decomposing the evaluation objectives into criteria and using a questionnaire assessed through a collection of case studies. Our systematic review showed the need to identify more consistent and uniform patterns in different dimensions for the systematic evaluation of digital educational games to achieve valid results that can be used as a basis for deciding on the use of digital educational games.

The prevalence of Corona virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected the university education system. Due to the development of technology in recent decades and the need for social distance to prevent the spread of the disease and to prevent interruptions in student education, education has changed to virtual. Considering the importance of education and its decisive role in improving the academic level of students, we tried to review the challenges of virtual education and the factors affecting its quality. This review study was performed by searching databases such: as Pubmed, Scopus, SID, and Magiran using keywords including virtual teaching, virtual learning, COVID-19, and Medical Sciences and limiting the search to the keywords in the title and abstract and also according to PRISMA guidelines. In the present study, the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning were investigated. Findings showed that the factors affecting the quality of e-learning are classified into four main sections, which include: the existence of appropriate infrastructure, Class control and administration, Necessary training for using software for professors and students, and the Proportion of the volume of taught content with its evaluation. One of the most important disadvantages of e-learning in the past year is the lack of proper infrastructure for training and exams, high internet interruption, the impossibility of student interaction, and the large volume of content. Due to the existence of barriers to the formation of classes in person, it is possible to help increase the educational quality of students and advance learning by using the necessary and appropriate measures in the correct use of virtual education and increasing the quality of the required infrastructure.

Background and Purpose of Study: 

COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent online mode of education has challenged national educational system and higher education. Thus, the present research aimed to explore students’ experience of the advantages and disadvantages of online education in Bandar Abbas University of medical sciences during the pandemic.

The present qualitative research conducted a content analysis of 26 nursing students’ experience. The sampling was purposive in type. Unstructured face to face interviews were conducted with individuals to collect the required data. The interview protocol was followed. The required social distance was kept and the ethical code was adhered to. The participants were interviewed as already arranged at a place of convenience. The interviews took between 40 and 60 minutes depending on the immediate condition. The data collection continued until data saturation.

The data analysis led to the extraction of 5 themes and 8 categories including teacher-student miscommunication, student-student miscommunication, evaluation issue, anxiety, distancing from active learning, materials/sources, lack of physical attendance, non-educational activities and 22 sub-categories.

The present findings can help professors and education authorities better know students’ expected learning and challenges of online education. They can, thus, be better aware of the existing barriers and can better plan to remove them.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, online education has gained more momentum. Despite its advantages, virtual learning has some drawbacks. To compensate for these shortcomings, the application of some innovative approaches has obtained more importance; one of them is Project-Based Learning (PBL).  The present study aimed at investigating the effect of PBL on students’ performance in a general English course. The participants were 55 Iranian freshmen medical students who registered in the General English Course at the Birjand University of Medical Sciences. They were selected based on convenience sampling. The classes were held virtually, twice a week for 24 sessions during the spring semester of 2020. All the students in the class were asked to do a term project in the form of making English language videos about a medical topic. The recorded classes, observations, and semi-structured interviews with the students about the advantages of doing projects were the sources of data. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis and validated through member checking. The data analyses resulted in five main themes about the advantages of PBL in the areas of students' "autonomy", "engagement", "learning", "motivation", and "evaluation". PBL helped the students to be more autonomous and improved their engagement. Furthermore, it helped them learn new words about the diseases and improve their knowledge of their major.  It also made the students more motivated and helped the teacher figure out how well they did during the term instead of just relying on the final exam.

 Many universities have turned to e-learning during the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic around the world. Ensuring the quality of higher education, especially in medicine, is considered one of the tasks of the education system, which is essential for both traditional methods and e-learning. This study aimed to monitor and evaluate the quality of e-learning conducted using the university LMS system for courses offered in the BS section and ICM section of medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study was an evaluation study using a goal-based approach that was conducted using the descriptive cross-sectional method. This study included 76 specialized courses offered in the first semester of the academic year of Bandar Abbas University of Medical Sciences, and participants were evaluated in terms of compliance with the course plan and the quality of the uploaded content. About 60% of e-learning courses presented in the course plan were in compliance with the curriculum. The uploaded educational content of 46.1% of the courses was good, 38.2% of the courses were relatively good, and 15.8% of the courses were not good. In the general review, e-learning courses offered were at a relatively desired level. Due to the new e-learning in medical schools, there is a need to monitor e-learning sessions during the course.