Assessment of Barriers and Motivators in E-teaching among Medical Faculty of Punjab during COVID-19 Lockdown

Background: The nationwide lockdown due to the spread of Corona virus Disease (COVID-19) has led to the disruption of several activities of everyday life including education. This had to shift towards e-learning and teaching to continue the uninterrupted flow of knowledge. Though e-teaching proves to be an effective teaching modality in current times, it’s not without its limitations and challenges. It is necessary to find out the problems faced by the teachers involved in e-teaching and the motivating factors so that improvements can be made in the current teaching modality to render it more effective and productive and solve the need of the hour. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among the teaching faculty of the medical institutions of Punjab. The data collection tool was a semi-structured self-made questionnaire prepared using ‘Google Forms’, which was then shared in the WhatsApp groups. Received responses were imported to the Microsoft Excel sheet and statistical analysis was done. Results: 97.1% of teachers were facing some kind of problem in e-teaching, most common of which were lack of personal interaction with the teachers (91.9%), poor response from students (54.5%), frequent technological failures/limited access to the internet (54.5%), Lack of training regarding the use of digital platforms/unprepared for e-teaching (25.4%), etc. Major motivating factors were the ability to share a variety of updated content with students (58.4%), increased flexibility of location (53.6%), being able to keep in touch with students and the subject even during the lockdown (48.8%), development of digital expertise (41.6%), the flexibility of time (29.7%), etc. Discussion: Online teaching cannot be a substitute to routine classroom teaching, however, it can be used as a supplement along with the routine teaching to share more content with the students, to give assignments, to receive feedback, etc. as suggested by most of the participants in this study