Challenging in teaching biostatistics in an e-learning environment. The experience of a postgraduate course.

In the last decade, with the spread of new IT (information technology), distancelearning diffusion (e-learning) has also increased. However, the online teaching experienceis fundamentally distinct from the instruction delivered in a face-to-face setting. The chal-lenge for teaching Biostatistics is harder to health professionals who are low motivated tolearn statistics in traditional academic courses. The purpose of this study is to describe theexperience of two postgraduate teaching courses in statistics delivered completely online atthe Biostatistics Unit (University of Padua). In the 2020-2021 edition, seventy-six studentsparticipate to the basic course of Biostatistics, while sixteen applied for the advanced one.Students are overall satisfied with the educational approach; they appreciate the contents, themodules and themes within the courses. However, one of the students’ limits is due to alack of preliminary knowledge about biostatistics notions and an excessive workload in theadvanced course. Evaluating student satisfaction regarding e-learning education has taughtus that monitoring student satisfaction can be a starting point for redefining the educationalsetting for future postgraduate editions.