Abstract:Objective To explore the effect of online course in teaching of otolaryngology head and neck surgery during COVID-19 epidemic.Methods The 5-year and 8-year clinical medicine students in 2016 grade as research objects from the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiaotong University were divided into two groups according to learning experience with or without online course. Both groups of students learn the same online course at home due to the epidemic. During the remission of the epidemic, the students have returned to campus. All the students with the same test paper were assessed at the same time and in the same place, and filled out subjective questionnaires. The data of the questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS 21.0.Results The results of theoretical examination as an objective indicator showed that the experimental group had (82.04±5.87) points and the control group had (84.22±4.12) points. There was no significant difference between the two groups (P>0.05). It shows that the content of this online course is appropriate and reasonable. And the students have no obvious maladaptation in the face of the new teaching form. The teaching quality is more satisfactory. As for the acknowledged advantages and disadvantages of online teaching, the results of both groups agree that it is necessary to carry out online teaching in a special period. However, there are still some doubts about the actual effect of online courses and about their ability to adapt.Conclusions Online teaching is an indispensable form of teaching for future development, and it is also a relatively positive development trend, but it may still not be suitable for completely replacing traditional offline classrooms at present.Using this valuable experience to make online and offline courses complement each other, it may be a more practical and worthwhile work direction for medical educators.