Background and Aim: Students' learning during their study period is one of the most important educational goals in the universities. During the corona pandemic, universities were forced to change traditional methods and turn to virtual education. However, this new method had not been investigated comprehensibly. Therefore, we conducted this study to compare the learning efficiency of students in virtual versus face-to-face education during the outbreak of the corona pandemic in the faculties of health and paramedicine of Gonabad University of Medical Sciences.

Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study included 210 students with different disciplines via convenient sampling. For data collection we used a two-part questionnaire: demographic data including nine questions and a standard learning efficiency questionnaire consisting of 45 questions. Data were entered into SPSS version22 software and analyzed by appropriate statistical tests.

Results: The mean scores of learning efficiency in face-to-face and virtual training were 165.96 ± 32.07 and 104.79 ± 25.39, respectively, and there was a statistically significant difference between the two training methods (P=0.000). Based on the Wilcoxon test, the total score of learning efficiency and all indexes in the questionnaire were significantly higher in the face-to-face training group compared to those in the virtual training group (p<0.05).

Conclusion: In this study, students in the face-to-face training group had higher learning efficiency. We recommend this method in the future programs.