Are live lectures a discontinued model? A survey on the influence of synchronous online lecturing on the perception of teaching and assessment outcome

Objectives: In the early phase of their studies, students are confronted with a number of teaching and learning methods they are usually not familiar with. Beyond, learning in a university environment requires a high degree of self-organization. Thus, the transition from learning in a school environment to university can be challenging for students and associated with adjustment difficulties. We hypothesized that synchronous online lecturing might be able to serve as a thematic superstructure and a curricular guide that can positively influence course perception, motivation and exam outcome. Methods: We investigated this hypothesis in a retrospective approach by comparing results from histology exams (2020 n=411, 2021 n= 423) and questionnaires for course evaluation received from medical and dentistry second semester students of the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in 2020 (n=113 questionnaire participants) and 2021 (n=106 questionnaire participants). While in 2020, due to the Corona Pandemic, no synchronous online lectures were held, these were reintroduced in 2021. Results: Our results show several differences in between the two study cohorts. Most important findings include a significantly (p<0.001) lower number of students that failed to pass or withdrew from the exam in 2021, an increased motivation to deal with the learning content (p<0.001) and a higher perceived quality of the study materials (p<0.001) in 2021. Conclusion: Our study indicates that synchronous online lectures can be an important tool to help students to accustom to new learning en-vironments and to structure private study. Further studies will now have to show whether live (online) lectures can have the same significance during clinical training.