Veterinary anatomy is considered as one of the basic science subjects of the veterinary curriculum. Anatomy education includes class teaching of theoretical parts, practical classes using dissected and prosected cadavers, plastinated specimens, plastic models (when possible), and modern imaging modalities, such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (Guevar and Rea, 2020). Practical anatomy is an essential part in veterinary students’ education to understand the normal animal structure through cadaver dissection, which is considered the basic and most effective educational tool for learning and teaching the normal architecture of the body, and to develop surgical skills (Tiplady et al., 2011; Gutierrez et al., 2017; Mohamed, 2020). The traditional teaching of veterinary anatomy provides a direct contact (visual, tactile, and smell) with the anatomical specimens. It helps students to have hands-on practice and a real feeling of the size and texture of organs, allowing students to have a three-dimensional image of the anatomical structure (Guevar and Rea, 2020).

COVID‐19 provided an opportunity for anatomists to switch from conventional methods of teaching anatomy to produce online learning resources that offer flexibility for learners, as well as educators (Brassett et al., 2020; Byrnes et al., 2020). However, it is challenging to teach anatomy online via virtual classes and distance learning. This abrupt shift to the virtual mode needs extra efforts due to the lack of practical cadaver dissection, embryology models, bone specimens, microscopic slides, and face-to-face interaction with teachers. Moreover, it will have a great impact on students (Brassett et al., 2020; Franchi, 2020; Ross et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2020; Mahdy and Sayed, 2021). The current situation provides an opportunity for a careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the online teaching of anatomy and compares it with conventional teaching methods (Brassett et al., 2020; Byrnes et al., 2020). It is crucial to assess the impact of shifting to online teaching of anatomy on students based on their concerns and views, student knowledge, and professional capabilities (Mahdy and Sayed, 2021). These studies will help the decision-makers to put plans to switch to online anatomy teaching, apply blended learning combining campus and online teaching together, and find a substitution for cadaveric specimens for the coming years (Brassett et al., 2020).

Recently, it has been reported that the COVID-19 lockdown negatively affected the academic performance of veterinary medical students and researchers (Mahdy, 2020). Mahdy and Sayed (Mahdy and Sayed, 2021) evaluated the online learning of veterinary anatomy during the lockdown period in an Egyptian veterinary medical school. Moreover, Longhurst et al. (Longhurst et al., 2020) analyzed the strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) of the adaptations to anatomical education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the perspectives of anatomical educators. The previous two studies highlighted several challenges, such as the lack of practical sessions, reduction of student engagement, and lack of technical support. Therefore, there is an essential need for academic collaboration, training on new technologies, inclusion of blended learning, free access to online resources, and development of alternative examination methods (Longhurst et al., 2020; Mahdy and Sayed, 2021). Cheng et al. (Cheng et al., 2020) conducted a national survey among anatomy educators to assess gross anatomy education in Chinese medical schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study revealed the low attitude of teachers toward the online teaching of anatomy because of the unique characteristics and requirements of anatomy education. Anatomy depends mainly on cadaver dissection, models, and specimens; therefore, virtual anatomy cannot replace hands-on experience to acquire knowledge (Cheng et al., 2020). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the students’ experiences and attitudes regarding the online shift of veterinary anatomy learning during the first lockdown. The objectives of the study were divided into quantitative and qualitative as follows:

-What are the veterinary students’ attitudes toward the sudden shift of anatomy learning during the first lockdown?

The qualitative research objective was to explore students’ opinions about the emergency shift to online learning. The qualitative research questions were as follows:

-What are the main problems associated with the sudden shift of anatomy learning during the first lockdown?

The participants of this study comprised students who were studying veterinary anatomy online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Volunteer veterinary students who studied anatomy online during the pandemic were recruited through an announcement done via the “Veterinary Anatomy World” Facebook page (Facebook, Palo Alto, CA) operated by the author (https://www.facebook.com/VeterinaryAnatomyWorld) with about 32K followers, mostly veterinary students. The aim of the study was clarified to the volunteer students, and then they were asked to share the questionnaire link among their colleagues in their schools through the class Facebook and WhatsApp groups. The study was done during the period from June 4 to December 20, 2020.

An online Google Form (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA) questionnaire was modified from our previous study (shorturl.at/cuxHS) (Mahdy and Sayed, 2021). The full version of the questionnaire is available as Supplementary Material S1. The validity of the questionnaire was checked in an initial pilot study on 25 students, and their feedback was used to modify the questionnaire. Questionnaire reliability was 0.82 as indicated by Cronbach’s alpha test.

The Institutional Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, South Valley University, Egypt, approved the study with approval number (3a/2020). Information about the aim of the questionnaire, voluntary participation, anonymity of participants, and data usage for research purposes was stated clearly at the beginning of the questionnaire. Participants were asked to provide their agreement, as a participant consent form, to participate in the study. The mixed-method research design, combining components of both qualitative and quantitative research, was used to evaluate students’ perspectives. The questionnaire consisted of 20 questions. It was divided into two sections. The first section covered the students’ demographic details, such as sex, age, country, university, and grade. It included four closed-ended and two open-ended questions. The second section evaluated the students’ perception regarding the online learning of anatomy during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as their interest in studying anatomy online, satisfaction with online learning, device used to access the online materials, type of the provided studying materials, comfortability with technological skills, degree of understanding, the learning tools used, the average studying hours before and during the lockdown period, the possibility of replacing face-to-face teaching, and the most common problem detected during the online learning of anatomy. It included 13 closed-ended and one open-ended questions. Students were asked to write their thoughts about the shift to remote teaching of anatomy as a free text answer at the end of the questionnaire. To measure the individual opinion of students (i.e., interest, comfortability, satisfaction, agreement, or understanding), a 4-point Likert scale that ranged from strongly disagree = 1 to strongly agree = 4 was used (Mulyanti et al., 2020).

The minimum number of participants (sample size) was calculated to be 384 participants (Dean et al., 2020). Data collection was done using a spreadsheet linked to the online Google Form questionnaire. The data were exported to the Microsoft Excel sheet (Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA).

The data were analyzed using SPSS version 21.0 (IBM Corporation, Armonk. NY). The Shapiro–Wilk test was used to assess the normal distribution of data. Descriptive statistics were analyzed, and the percentage, frequencies, mean (M), and standard deviation (SD) of each scale were calculated. The ordinal data obtained from the student responses were converted to numeric values as follows: strongly agree = 4 points, agree = 3 points, disagree = 2 points, strongly disagree = 1 point (Mayer and Cavallaro, 2019), and the mean ± SD was calculated. An independent t-test was used to compare the differences between the scores for male and female students, and the effect size (Cohen’s d) was calculated. The statistical difference was indicated when p < 0.05. Open-ended questions were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

A total of 974 students participated in the present study. However, 13 students did not agree to be included in the study; therefore, they were excluded. The final number of participants was 961 coming from 87 countries and six continents, with about 94.67% of the participants agreeing to be included in the study (Table 1). The distribution of the participants across the continents was as follows: the majority of students were from Asia (34.96%), followed by Africa (24.35%), Europe (20.29%), Australia (7.80%), North America (6.45%), South America (5.83%), and Oceania (New Zeeland, 0.31%). Most of the participants were female (55.88%). The mean age of participants was 22.00 ± 3.42 years (range from 18 to 36 years), with a majority of participants (89%) falling in the age range of 18–25 years. Approximately 87% of the students were first- and second-year students (Table 2). All participating students confirmed that they studied anatomy online during the lockdown period.

To evaluate the online learning of anatomy during the lockdown, the students were asked to express their opinion using 4-point Likert scale questions.

Data showed that the mean students’ interest rate in studying anatomy online during the lockdown was 3.12 ± 0.88, with a majority of students (81.58%) being interested in studying anatomy online during the COVID-19 lockdown. The mean score of the male respondents was significantly higher than that of female respondents regarding the interest in studying anatomy online during the COVID-19 lockdown (p = 0.000, Cohen’s d = 0.36). In addition, the mean students’ comfortability rate with the technological skills was 3.14 ± 0.81, with a majority of students (82.21%) being comfortable with the technological skills (using computer, surfing the Internet, downloading files, etc.) during online studying of anatomy during the lockdown. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean score of the male and female respondents regarding the comfortability with the technological skills (p = 0.057, Cohen’s d = 0.12). Furthermore, the mean students’ understanding rate of online learning of anatomy during the lockdown was 2.62 ± 0.84, with a majority of students (60.46%) reporting that they were able to understand anatomy well using online learning during the lockdown. The mean score of the male respondents was significantly higher than that of female respondents regarding the understanding rate of online learning of anatomy during the lockdown (p = 0.000, Cohen’s d = 0.36) (Figure 1).

The studying materials provided to students were mostly in the form of a Portable Document Format (pdf), followed by PowerPoint presentations with a recorded voice, online streaming using video-conferencing softwares (such as Moodle, Zoom, and blackboard), 3D animations, dissection videos made by staff members, anatomy books, and handouts (Figure 2). The mean students’ satisfaction rate with the provided studying materials was 2.66 ± 0.86. The mean score of the male respondents was significantly higher than that of female respondents regarding the satisfaction rate with the provided studying materials (p = 0.000, Cohen’s d = 0.40). However, about two-thirds of students (60.46%) reported their satisfaction with the provided studying materials, with a majority of students (93.24%) reporting their need for additional studying materials to help them understand the provided lessons of anatomy (Figure 1).

To understand anatomy during the COVID-19 lockdown, students used several online tools. Of these tools, YouTube videos and anatomy textbooks were the most used tools. The other tools were as follows: educational websites, anatomy Facebook pages, educational applications, research articles, anatomy E. books, anatomy WhatsApp groups, and anatomy telegram channels (Figure 3). The electronic devices used to connect to the virtual system were as follows: smartphone (42.07%) followed by a laptop (38.08%), personal computer (10.85%), and tablet (9.00%).

The current results showed that approximately 52.76% of students believed that online learning of anatomy was most suitable for theoretical parts, about 8.74% of students believed that online learning of anatomy was most suitable for practical parts, and about 30.28% of students believed that online learning of anatomy was most suitable for both theoretical and practical parts. While 8.22% of students believe that online learning of anatomy was suitable for neither theoretical nor practical parts. On the contrary, about 36.63% of students thought that online learning of anatomy could replace face-to-face teaching (Figure 1). Here are quotations from students’ opinion regarding studying anatomy online during lockdown:

The average studying hours of anatomy decreased during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to the period before the lockdown. The percentage of students who spent 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, and 8–10 h/week studying anatomy during the COVID-19 lockdown decreased by 6.74, 6.19, 0.99, and 2.32% compared to the period before the lockdown, respectively. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who spent 1–2 and 10–12 h/week studying anatomy during the COVID-19 lockdown increased by 13.26 and 2.98%, respectively (Figure 4).

Approximately 99 students answered the question regarding the problems associated with online learning of anatomy; these problems could be categorized in the following themes: lack of practical sessions (62), Internet-related issues (14), lack of interaction (13), delay of receiving feedback (4), training of lectures (3), and longer time to understand (3). Quotations from students’ opinion regarding problems of studying anatomy online during the lockdown were also presented:

1) Lack of Practical Sessions

Approximately 55 students provided recommendations to improve online teaching of veterinary anatomy. These recommendations could be categorized in the following themes: improvement of teaching (35) and the enhancement of internet connection (20).

1) Improvement of Teaching: This theme includes three subthemes

This study has a number of limitations. This study focused to evaluate the students’ experience with the online shift of veterinary anatomy learning during the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, further research on different subjects of the veterinary curriculum could reveal different insights. The results of this study were based on the experience of university students, who might change their perceptions for a number of reasons. In addition, several countries were represented by a few numbers of participants as not all target students were reached. However, their inclusion in the study helped to get a global and diverse overview. Since the questionnaire invitation was distributed online, it is assumed that the students that are most active online are most likely to see and respond to the invitation to participate and, by association, the most likely to prefer online learning. The findings may therefore not represent all anatomy students but rather students with a higher online activity. Finally, the results of this study focused on differences between genders.