Adaptation and validation of a scale to evaluate the quality of virtual courses developed for medical students in Peru during the COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Claudio Intimayta-Escalante
  2. Rubí Plasencia-Dueñas
  3. Kevin Flores-Lovon
  4. Janeth N. Nuñez-Lupaca
  5. Mario Chavez-Hermosilla
  6. Ronald Castillo-Blanco

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Abstract

Background

During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical education migrated to digital environments, without clear guidelines for virtual courses or evaluations of how these courses have been developed.

Objective

To adapt and validate a scale to evaluate the quality of virtual courses developed for human medicine students in Peru.

Methods

Cross-sectional study that adapted a scale to assess the quality of virtual courses to the context of Peruvian medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the Delphi methodology and pilot tests for a rigorous evaluation of the items, resulting in a scale of 30 items that were described with summary statistics. In addition to the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Oblimin rotation, together with the adequacy and sample fit with Bartlett test and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO), while the internal consistency was estimated with the alpha coefficient.

Results

A total of 297 medical students in Peru were surveyed. The descriptive statistics for the items showed a normal distribution, while the Bartlett test showed no inadequacy (X2=6134.34, p<0.01) and with the KMO test an overall value greater than 0.92 was found, therefore an AFE was performed where five factors were identified (General Quality and Didactic Methodology, Design and Navigation of the Virtual Platform, Multimedia Resources, Academic Materials) with 30 items. In the internal consistency, an alpha coefficient greater than 0.85 was estimated for the factors evaluated.

Conclusions

The adapted scale of 30 items grouped into five factors or domains, show adequate evidence of validity and reliability to be used in the evaluation of the quality of virtual courses developed for Peruvian human medicine students during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.08.22268928: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: In addition, the study protocol was submitted and reviewed by the research ethics committee of the Hospital Nacional Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo of Peru, obtaining the ethical approval for the study with the resolution NTI-75502021030, this was obtained before of starting the pilot study and data collection.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data collection: The data were collected with a self-applied online survey (https://is.gd/Calidad20) developed in REDCap v.
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)
    Statistical analysis: The statistical analysis was developed in R Studio software version 3.4 with the packages “psych”, “lavaan”, “semTools”, “semPlot” and “GPArotation”, using absolute and relative frequency measures to describe the general characteristics of the respondents, using measures of central tendency (mean) and dispersion (standard deviation) for the numerical variables.
    R Studio
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The study has certain limitations, since it evaluates the virtual courses corresponding to the 2020 academic year that ended on different dates in 2021 for medical schools in Peru, which predisposes to a greater effect of memory bias in some cases, likewise, some students influenced by the social desirability bias could have chosen to favorably describe the courses that were provided by their universities. In addition, there are some particular situations about problems with the virtual courses that could not be evaluated in the instrument but that the students expressed in a blank question placed in each section of the survey and given the variability of these comments we suggest that they could be better addressed with qualitative studies (14). Also, being a virtual survey disseminated through social networks, it has a reach to a specific group of students who share certain characteristics in the use of these platforms (Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram), which could affect the way in which they evaluate the quality of virtual courses. However, despite the above, the study also has strengths that lie in the inclusion of students from most medical schools in Peru from different academic years that provide a greater scope of application of the survey, although it was not possible to survey students who performed face-to-face activities in the internship since they had graduated from the university at the time of the survey and because they performed face-to-face activities wit...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.01.08.22268928v1 on medRxiv