PONE-D-22-18325Readiness, barriers, and attitude of students towards online medical education amidst COVID-19 pandemic: a study among medical students of Ebonyi State University Abakaliki, NigeriaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Eze,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This study describes the barriers to online learning during COVID-19 in Nigeria which is a gap in literature. However there are some changes that need to be made and the recommendations are as follows:

Line 130,131 --Reword the sentence for clarity "The university was eventually re-opened by February 2021. The study occurred between September and October 2021, about seven months after the school was re-opened"

Please detail the questionnaire used in the study by referencing or adding it in the appendix

Table 1,2,3 - merge the frequency and percentage in one column

Table 2- merge the frequency and percentage in one column, change "i phone" to "iphone", change "Internet modern to internet modem. The email address, webinar and internet access question in the table without a Yes should be structured.

Reviewer #2: Dear

I realize that authors have many journals to consider when they want to publish their work, so I appreciate your interest in PLOS ONE; I am very sorry not to be able to write in a more positive way. It is evident that you have put a great deal of effort into this project and I want to praise your efforts. Fortunately, the actual contribution from your study is clear and, the manuscript as currently written suggests that it might be suitable for sharing information about online medical education amidst COVID-19 pandemic topic, but the paper that you reported, needs few major edits. I should like to thank you for give me an opportunity to consider this work for publication.

It may be that the you would like to consider resubmitting it, in which case I hope that the comments from my review may help you to revise it before resubmitting it. These comments are given below.

Best Regards

- General review:

The paper is very interesting, but essentially needs to be rewritten to make it more linear scientifically and narrative structured

- Introduction section:

is too poor; many references are missing in the many sentences; In scientific literature is not possible to have the parts of paper without references;

better describe the context, the reasons for this study and the need to implement the topic of online medical education;

- Material and Methods:

Please indicate which Statement of reporting was used to construct and conduct the study, e.g. in according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES) guidelines (Eysenbach, 2004) and or STrengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) (von Elm et al., 2007);

Define whether questionnaire development and pre-testing questionnaire processes were used;

- Results:

insert a more descriptive part and greater analysis of the results in a reasoned and narrative way, not just describing the tables.

- in discussion:

Discussions should be reviewed in light of the overall improvement of the paper. Redundant sentences and prewritten information should be avoided. Focus on take-home messages and how that information impacts in the online healthcare education and how its implementations will be exploited in the near future.

introduce a section of strengths also;

- Tables:

could be improved in style reporting.

- Reference:

is very poor. I suggest to add the follow references in the introduction section:

Online teaching in physiotherapy education during COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a retrospective case-control study on students' satisfaction and performance.

Rossettini G, Geri T, Turolla A, Viceconti A, Scumà C, Mirandola M, Dell'Isola A, Gianola S, Maselli F, Palese A.

BMC Med Educ. 2021 Aug 30;21(1):456. doi: 10.1186/s12909-021-02896-1.

Digital Entry-Level Education in Physiotherapy: a Commentary to Inform Post-COVID-19 Future Directions.

Rossettini G, Turolla A, Gudjonsdottir B, Kapreli E, Salchinger B, Verheyden G, Palese A, Dell'Isola A, de Caro JX.

Med Sci Educ. 2021 Nov 4;31(6):2071-2083. doi: 10.1007/s40670-021-01439-z. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Minor Edits:

- explode the acronym ITC

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Readiness, barriers, and attitude of students towards online medical education amidst COVID-19 pandemic: a study among medical students of Ebonyi State University Abakaliki, Nigeria

PONE-D-22-18325R1

Dear Dr. Irene, 

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Yaser Mohammed Al-Worafi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments: