Development and validation of Digi-MEE Instrument measuring online learning environments in medical education

Objectives: To develop and validate Digital Medical Education Environment (Digi-MEE) Instrument for measuring online learning environment in medical education.Methods: This series of studies involved 696 participants from May 2022 to December 2022. Following scoping review, invited modified e-Delphi experts developed consensus on the components and related items for measuring online learning environments. A panel of content experts and a group of medical students carried out content and response process validation to determine Content Validity Index (CVI) and Face Validity Index (FVI) respectively. This was followed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis to determine Digi-MEE's factorial structure and internal consistency using SPSS version 26.0 and AMOS 26.0.Results: Delphi experts agreed upon nine components with 73 items of initial Digi-MEE version. CVI of Digi-MEE 2.0 was more than 0.90. with FVI of Digi-MEE 3.0 of 0.87. Exploratory factor analysis yielded 46 items with 57.18% variance. Confirmatory factor analysis led to the final Digi-MEE version containing 28 items within nine components with acceptable levels of goodness of fit indices. Overall Cronbach alpha of the final Digi-MEE was more than 0.90, and for the nine components ranged between 0.62 and 0.76.Conclusion: Digi-MEE is a promising valid and reliable instrument to evaluate online education environment in medical education. Content, response-process, factorial structure, and internal consistency evidence support the validity of Digi-MEE. Medical schools can use Digi-MEE as an evaluation tool for the continuous quality improvement of online learning environments.