A View on the Virtualizability of Practical Courses : Romanian Medical Students' Perspective in the Context of a Sudden Online Shift

Abstract: The rapid development of information communication technologies has created unique, exceptional opportunities for conducting education. Thus, the transposal of learning into the virtual world constituted the biggest transformation that education went through- a real paradigm change. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the most abrupt virtualization of education until today. The educational systems in most of the countries experienced significant transformations and had to reconceptualize their whole learning models, in order to adjust them to the online environment. This sudden change did not have the same impact on all the countries- some of them adapted easier and quicker to virtualization than others. The transition to online learning also varied with the educational branch and type of courses that had to be transposed into the digital medium. Whereas the translation of the theoretical courses into the virtual environment did not constitute an immense burden, transposing practical courses into the digital world represented a real challenge for educational institutions. For medical universities in particular, the pressure of adapting to the conditions of the pandemic was even bigger than for other educational organizations, as these had to enable timely graduation of the students in order to support the overwhelmed healthcare systems fighting the pandemic.      Existing studies looked into topics such as online education, virtualization of education and other related themes, but very few scholars researched into the matter of education virtualizability. Moreover, studies were mainly conducted in digitally developed countries like the USA. Practical courses were also not being studied very extensively in the existing research context, theoretical ones being mostly underlined. Additionally, study branches such as management and business were the main focus of the existing papers, which did not center their discoveries around the medical area. The named gaps in the current literature underlined the need of a clear view on the medical students' perception on the virtualizability of practical courses in a country such as Romania. Thus, the aim of this master's thesis was to look into the named matter. In order to provide a contribution to the existing literature, after gaining the opinions of students, a theoretical model was created, that depicts the main characteristics that have to be applied to a virtual practical course, so that it reaches a high virtualizability. Using as a framework the process virtualization theory, a qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured interviews made with Romanian, medical undergraduates. The collected information was analyzed with the use of thematic deductive analysis and was classified according to the four requirements presented by the adopted theory. Hence, themes and categories were identified, that helped classify and organize students' view on virtualizability.      The empirical results showed that all the regarded requirements, i.e., sensory, relationship, identification & control and synchronicity requirements were at a high level. This means that in order to transpose practical medical courses into the virtual environment, there are specific, mandatory elements that need to be implemented, so that the process of education can be conducted in a beneficial way. The registered high requirements resulted in a low virtualizability of the analyzed type of courses. However, together with the detected themes and categories, a new theoretical model was built, which offers valuable insights into the needs that need to be fulfilled, in order to improve the depicted virualizability. Future research can use the developed conceptual model as a base and extend the existing knowledge to further countries, course types and/or educational branches.