Online learning through the prism of midwifery students

Information for nursing staff, 2022, 55(2), 27-34.

T. Veselinova, D. Hadzhideleva, B. Simeonova

Department of Health Care, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University – Sofia

Abstract. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed our way of life. For months during the restrictive measures, educational institutions closed their doors and switched to e-learning. Before the occurrence of the emergency situation, the Faculty of Public Health „Prof. Dr. Tsekomir Vodenitcharov“, MU – Sofia, did not have developed and enforced methods for conducting online learning in the specialty „Midwife“. This caused an initial imbalance in teaching upon the announcement of the pandemic, which, with the combined efforts of management, faculty and students, was quickly contained. While at the beginning the main goal was to provide organized technological training, to compensate some of the missed days for exercises and to consolidate knowledge, the decision to extend the period of the introduced anti-epidemic measures due to the coronavirus faced everyone with the task of converting the electronic form of training in a more complete form of learning. The purpose of the study was to analyze the opinion of the students of the „Midwifery“ specialty regarding the organization of the conducted online learning and their satisfaction with the quality of the electronic learning environment. The study was conducted through an individual anonymous survey and covered the students of all courses of the educational qualification Bachelor degree, specialty „Midwife“ of Faculty of Public Health „Prof. Tsekomir Vodenitcharov“, MU – Sofia, for the 2021/2022 academic year. The results of the study show that distance learning offers effective and diverse digital solutions that eliminate some of the existing deficits and undeniably outline new projections for implementation in education. At this stage, however, there is no education management system that can completely replace the traditional form of training for such practice-oriented specialties as midwifery.

Key words: online/distance learning, students, satisfaction, midwife specialty

Address for correspondence: Tanya Veselinova, e-mail: tanq_veselinova@abv.bg