COVID-19 and Online Education in Iran’s Universities of Medical Sciences: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Context: With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid growth of online education, Iranian universities of medical sciences began to hold online classes for students. Accordingly, the present study aimed to examine different aspects of online education in medical universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This narrative review study was to review studies on online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran’s universities of medical sciences. To this end, the PubMed and Sciencedirect databases as well as the Google Scholar scientific search engine were searched on April 20, 2021 using the following keywords: ‘online education,’ ‘virtual education,’ ‘virtual learning,’ ‘e-learning,’ ‘COVID-19,’ and ‘Iran’. Results: The present findings revealed Navid, Adobe Connect, and SkyRoom platforms as the most popular online teaching tools in Iran’s universities of medical sciences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main challenges in online education in Iranian universities of medical sciences was students’ non-equal accessibility to appropriate hardware, software, and communication tools, students and professors’ insufficient knowledge and unfamiliarity with information technology tools and e-learning, lack of proper interactions between professors and students, and the lack of a suitable platform for practical clinical training and internships. Conclusions: Educational simulation systems and online education support systems are useful in teaching clinical, practical, and internship courses to students and promoting interactions between teachers and students.