Preparedness of Blended Education prior to SARS-COV-2 Pandemic via Google Classroom for the fifth Year Medical Students, Otolaryngology Rotation.

Background: Generally, we use face-to-face manner as a main method for teaching while some flipped classroom applied online to get more achievement. The Department of Otolaryngology, Phramongkutklao College of Medicine(PCM) has introduced the online Google Classroom (GC) to the fifth-year medical students, in the academic year of 2019. The main purpose of the online GC may be applied to the flipped classroom for the fifth-year medical students. Due to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic situation at the time of this academic year, each rotation should get a different learning method. Therefore, it appeared that the second to the seventh rotation from total 8 rotations learned by blended education. Face to face manner of teaching was applied first then it was switched to online GC. After that, the eighth rotation came at the same time of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, they were switched to the online GC only. It may be very hard if the online teaching has not been prepared before the time comes. The purpose of this study was to report the result of the application of GC and difference between group of the second to seventh rotation and the group of eighth rotations. How, the first rotation was not included in the study since they had opportunity to learn only face to face procedure. Methods: This is a descriptive prospective study by data collection from 86 medical students of the second to eighth rotations while the eighth rotation studied 100% online. The variable data, including a general information, satisfaction, and tools for accessing the GC were obtained from the questionnaires given to the second to the eighth rotation of the fifth-year medical students. Besides, the daily quiz (DQ) created and evaluated by the second-year residents were preformed and analyzed for the relationship with multiple choice question marks, slide quiz marks, objective structured clinical examination marks and practical marks. Moreover, the questionnaires regarding the comparison between the Google Classroom and the Moodle (MD) were also given to the sixth to eight rotations. Results: From evaluation (of the full mark of 5) of satisfaction and usage, it was found that the satisfaction was 4.7, difficulty to access was 3.2, suitability of DQ was 4.5 as well as the content of pedagogy, bedside teaching and OPD teaching conform with DQ was 4.5. Information through GC was useful by 4.2. Convenience to do SDL through GC was 4.5. Preferring to do SDL through GC was 4.5 and believe that GC could reduce paper consumption was 4.8. Comparison between GC and MD, there were 66.7% (26/39) of students who answered the evaluation with 96.1% preferred GC. Among these, 80.8% thought GC was easier to access, and 76.9% thought GC was more user friendly than MD. Correlation analysis by Pearson correlation, it was found that rotation was related to slide quiz (p = 0.010) and PBL marks (p < 0.001). Those who had more numbers of answering quizzes would gain higher quiz marks (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Using of the blended education to familiarize students, faculty and support staffs with learning management system are important since if 100% online teaching is needed. The change from face to face to online could be easily performed. Almost of student preferred Google Classroom to Moodle.