Perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: During the era of COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has become more prevalent as it was the most available option for higher education training which has been a challenging experience for the students and the lecturers especially in the medical and health sciences training. The study was conducted to determine the perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted to clinical year medical students at University Tunku Abdul Rahman. The validated Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) was used as a tool to conduct the study.
Results: Total 84 clinical year students participated in the study. Among four domains of OLES questionnaire, the domain; “Support of online learning” had the highest mean perception scores, 4.15 (0.55), followed by “Usability of online learning tools” 3.89 (0.82), and “Quality of Learning; 3.80 (0.68) and the domain “Enjoyment” was the lowest mean perception scores 3.48 (1.08). Most of the students (52.4%) rated the overall satisfaction of online teaching experiences “Very good” while (13.1) % rated “Excellent”.
Conclusion: In conclusion, the perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic were satisfactory although there were challenging online learning experiences during the pandemic. It was recommended to include qualitative method in future studies to provide more useful in-depth information regarding online learning environment.