Description of Medical Students' Behavioral, Cognitive, and Psychological Engagement with Faculty Online Teaching Styles.

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The teacher-student dyad is the heart of an institute. A teacher's instructional role significantly influences the student engagement that indirectly measures the institutional outcome. The online transition of medical education changed the milieu of medical education where a virtual link between teacher and student is the only hope for the learner to continue the learning. There were no studies on the relationship between student engagement and teaching styles during online medical education. Patients and Methods: The present study was an online survey-based descriptive study on medical undergraduates from two universities in the United Arab Emirates. Google forms containing consent statements, teaching styles inventory in higher education (TSIHE), and online student engagement questionnaires were emailed to all medical students requesting to participate in the study. Completed survey questionnaires were analyzed descriptively for the degree of student online engagement, and a chi-square test was used to correlate the relation between faculty online instructional methods and students' engagement. Results: A total of 423 of 927 students from two universities participated in the survey. There was no significant perception difference among the students from the two universities regarding their faculty online teaching styles. Thirty-three percent of students at first university and 41% of second university students showed engagement during online classes, which is statistically significant. However, the degree of students' disengagement from both universities was high compared to their engagement for online classes. Both university students' cognitive and behavioral engagement was moderate to strongly correlated with four domains of teaching style. Interestingly, there was no correlation between online faculty instructional methods and students' psychological engagement from both the universities. Conclusion: The present study establishes the relationship between students' cognitive and behavioral engagement and teaching instructional practices. However, there is a need to develop robust evidence on students' psychological engagement and the influencing factors during online and blended contexts.