Online learning in health research concepts: Evaluation of its outcome against face-to-face learning - A quasi-experimental study

COVID-19 provides an opportunity to utilize technology to develop new and better ways to provide care and support, educate health care professionals, and support research. Learning research methods through short-term courses is becoming essential among health professionals to perform quality research to generate evidence in health sciences. Since 2017, The Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, a State-Run university has conducted research methodology workshops for health professional postgraduates to understand research concepts and do quality dissertations. The COVID-19 has pushed us to change times where online classes have been used for this training since 2020 we aimed to evaluate whether online learning of research concepts could improve learning outcomes as compared to offline sessions.

A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate the participants before and after the sessions using a structured questionnaire regarding their knowledge on four domains of research methodology and biostatistics, covering the key components focused on in the workshop.

Our results showed that more participants who attended online workshops scored better in their post-workshop evaluation than in regular face-to-face sessions. Only one out of 20 subdomains, research objective, showed better mean average results in regular workshop sessions concluding that online workshops are the better option for our future sessions.

Online sessions are a better option for students to learn better. In future online sessions would benefit them to learn from the world's best researchers through technology, facilitate quality research and can succeed to generate evidence-based medicine.