Author Guidelines Submit Manuscript Editorial Board Member PERCEPTION ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AS EMERGING TOOLS TO SUPPORT MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

Background: Today, in these times of quarantine and confinement at home due to the constant threat of COVID-19, many students observe a decrease in productivity per hour dedicated to work, and although the same can happen in reverse, since each person has various activities, there may be many reasons why productivity at home is decreasing: the poor quality of the internet, the lack of tools necessary to carry out the work, fear, bad self-regulation role, poor time planning, and distractions. E-learning and virtual environments emerged as a new teaching method to maintain the continuity of medical education. Defining e-learning as the use of computer technology to deliver training, including technology-supported learning, whether online, offline, or both. Before this isolation, distance education and virtual environments did not figure within universities as an educational model. This study aims to explore the role played by virtual environments and online learning in first-year medical students of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Universidad Regional del Sureste, thus allowing the identification of possible challenges, limitations, satisfaction, and prospects for this approach to learning.

Methods: It is a descriptive-cross-sectional study based on a questionnaire that was designed and delivered to first-year students. For this study, the estimated sample size (n = 84) is derived from the "Raosoft" sample size calculator available online.

Results: The results of the study show that 84.7% are regular students and 15.5% irregular, with an average academic performance of 7.95 and a perception of the virtual resources used by students as adequate (64%), a quality of technology perceived as satisfactory (72.6%), in terms of the learning resources used, they were perceived by the students as to their liking (79.7%). In addition to having had a satisfactory accompaniment (58.8%) from the teachers and coordinators.

Conclusion: In general, it can be concluded that the students perceived the virtual education carried out in this school year (2020-2021) as adequate and this had a positive relationship with the academic performance presented.