Clinical anatomy remote learning: A mixed methods analysis of learning outcomes and student perceptions

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to assess remote Clinical Anatomy. Conversion of the donor dissection laboratory to asynchronous videos, combined with synchronous laboratory review and lecture, provided an alternative to face-to-face (F2F) learning. Two cohorts, 2019 (n = 104) and 2020 (n = 102), of dental and physician assistant (PA) students received F2F and remote instruction, respectively. Summative assessment items and low-stakes exam scores from both cohorts were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn's post hoc analysis. The Clinical Anatomy Online Survey was developed to assess student perspectives of their anatomical knowledge and was administered to the 2020 cohort. Research goals were to assess learning outcomes, survey perspectives, and determine relationships between learning outcomes and perceptions of remote clinical anatomy students. Results were triangulated using a concurrent monomethod multistrand method. The 2020 remote PA cohort scored 5.0 ± 1.6 (5.0%, p = 0.017) points higher on summative assessment items and 1.4 ± 0.43 (4.7%, p = 0.003) points higher on low-stakes exams than the 2019 PA cohort, indicating adequate cognitive gains for remote learning. Performance on summative and low-stakes exams did not differ by format for dental students. Students also reported adequate cognitive domain gains in anatomical knowledge, but many perceived a lack of psychomotor and affective domain learning as a lost opportunity.