What just happened? Impact of on-campus activities suspension on pharmacy education during COVID-19 lockdown – A students’ perspective

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jsps.2020.12.008
• Publication Date: 2020-12-21T03:14:22Z
• Authors: Majid Ali; Moayad Allihyani; Akrm Abdulaziz; Safwan Alansari; Sultan Faqeh; Ahmad Kurdi; Abdulrahman Alhaj...
• Keywords: Thematic Analysis; Pharmacy education

COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown, suspending all on-campus educational activities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), compelling to continue education online. We explored pharmacy students' perspective on its impact their learning.A Twitter chat was organized three consecutive days, after final examinations, inviting students KSA participate. Day 1 included 11 questions regarding learning and assessment, 2 six about online examinations technology use, 3 related lessons learnt from experiences during lockdown. The were validated piloted before chat. responses copied, reviewed remove any confidential information, thematically analyzed by two teams research independently.During three-day chat, 790 received total. Thematic analysis generated 944 codes which categorized into 43 subthemes. These subthemes further main themes: 'facilitators for education', 'barriers 'online versus onsite 'role 'suggestions improving education' 'long-term lockdown'. Participants highlighted several facilitators barriers affected compared with education, provided suggestions based lockdown.As repercussions are expected last longer, colleges academic staff will find these findings useful prepare coming years, ensuring pedagogical accreditation standards.