Abstract PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: As dental education evolves, a shift towards self- and peer-assessments, producing dental professionals who are reflective, life-long learners, is evident. This study aims to establish the agreement of competency between and amongst students, and their course tutors, during a pre-clinical skills programme.METHODS: Following cavity preparation of plastic teeth during a pre-clinical skills session, students assessed their own cavity preparations and those of their peers. Two course tutors undertook assessment of the same prepared teeth. Plastic teeth were used during the pre-clinical skills sessions and assessed using a WHO CPITN probe and light. Overall scores of competent (C) or not competent (NC) was assigned to each tooth. The data were collected and analysed using Fischer's exact test.RESULTS: No statistical significance was found between self-, peer- or tutor-assessments. Tutors’ assessments were in agreement. Peer- and self-assessment agreed with tutor-assessment two-thirds of the time. When not in agreement with tutor-assessment, peer- and self-assessment had a tendency to underestimate scores.CONCLUSION: Whilst no statistical significance was found, tutor-assessment had a high degree of agreement. Peer- and self-assessment appeared to agree with the tutor-assessment two-thirds of the time. When not in agreement with the tutor, students tended to underestimate themselves and their peers.

Background: The advent of electronic teaching facilities improves tutor-student communication. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of Phone-Based Audience Response System (PB-ARS), as an adjunctive pedagogy tool to enhance the retention of orthodontic information by dental students; and to explore the students’ perception of PB-ARS. Methods: This cross-over clustered randomised control trial included 34 males who were in the final year of their undergraduate dental training. Participants were allocated to one of two event groups (G1 and G2) using computer-generated randomisation. Both groups simultaneously attended two different traditional lectures (L 1 and L2) a week apart. During L1, PB-ARS was used as an adjunct to conventional presentation to teach G1 participants, (PB-ARS group) while G2’s participants acted as a control group (CG), and were taught using a traditional presentation. In the second week (L2), the interventions were crossed-over. Participants from both groups completed pre- and post-lecture multiple-choice questionnaires (MCQ) to assess their short-term retention of information. Their performance in the final MCQ exam (10 weeks following L2) was tracked to assess the long-term retention of the information. Participants also completed post-lecture questionnaires to evaluate their perceptions. Results: 29 and 31 participants from the CG and PB-ARS group completed this trial, respectively. Although 87.5% of students in the PB-ARS group showed an improvement in their immediate post-lecture scores compared with 79.3% for the CG, it was statistically insignificant (p= 0.465). Similarly, the intervention showed an insignificant effect on the long-term retention of the knowledge (p=0.560).There was a mildly but favourable attitude of students towards the use of PB-ARS. However, the difference in the overall level of satisfaction between both groups was statistically insignificant (p=0.183).Conclusion: PB-ARS has a minimal and insignificant effect on the short- and long-term retention of orthodontic knowledge by male undergraduate dental students. PB-ARS was the preferred adjunct tool to conventional classroom teaching. Due to the limitations of this trial, a long-term randomised controlled trial with a larger sample size is recommended.

Background: The advent of electronic teaching facilities improved tutor-student communication. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of Phone-Based Audience Response System (PB-ARS), as an adjunctive and interactive model to traditional pedagogy, on the retention of information by undergraduate dental students and to explore the students’ perception and acceptance of PB-ARS. Methods: This cross-over clustered randomised control trial was conducted with 34 final year undergraduate dental students, who were allocated to one of two event groups (G1 and G2) using computer-generated randomisation. Both groups simultaneously attended two different traditional lectures a week apart (L 1 and L2). During L1, PB-ARS was used as an adjunct to conventional presentation to teach G1 participants (PB-ARS group). In contrast, G2’s participants acted as a control group (CG), and they were taught using the traditional presentation. In the second week (L2), the interventions were crossed. Participants from both groups completed pre- and post-lecture multiple-choice questions (MCQ) to assess short-term retention of information. They also filled post-lecture questionaries' to determine their perceptions of teaching delivery. Their performance in the final MCQ exam (10 weeks following L2) were used assess the long-term recall of the obtained knowledge. Results: 29 and 31 participants from the CG and PB-ARS group completed this trial, respectively. Although 87.5% of students in PB-ARS group showed an improvement in their post-lecture scores compared to 79.3% for CG, it was statistically insignificant. Similarly, the intervention showed an insignificant effect on the long-term retention of the knowledge.There was a mildly favourable attitude of students to the PB-ARS system; however, the difference in the overall rate of the level of satisfaction in both was statistically insignificant.Conclusion: PB-ARS system has a minimal insignificant effect on short- and long term retention of knowledge of the undergraduate dental students, though it was a slightly more preferred adjunct to conventional classroom teaching. Due to the limitation of this trial, a long-term randomised controlled trial with a larger sample size is recommended.

Background: The advent of electronic teaching facilities opened doors towards a better tutor-student communication. The aim of this study is to explore the effectiveness of phone-based ARS (PB-ARS) using text- and multimedia-based questions on information retention by male dental undergraduate students and to explore the students’ perception and acceptance of ARS. Methods: A cross-over clustered randomised control trial was conducted at the College of Dentistry, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University/Alkharj/ Saudi Arabia. Students were allocated to one of two event groups (G1 or G2) using computer generated randomization. During the first intervention (lecture 1), G1 received ARS assisted lecture and G2 acts as a control group, then crossed over during the second intervention (lecture 2). Data for short- and long-term information retention were treated on intention to treat analysis basis and tested using Mann–Whitney U and t-test in addition to qualitative assessment of students’ perception and acceptance. Results : The results showed marginal improvements in short and long term retention of information in addition to positive attitude of students towards the ARS system. 87.5% of students in ARS group showed an improvement in their quiz score compared to 79.3% for control group. No statistically significant differences were observed between the intervention and control groups. Conclusion : the ARS system could be considered as an adjunctive teaching method to improve on information retention and interest in Orthodontics taught materials.

Background: The advent of electronic teaching facilities improves tutor-student communication. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of Phone-Based Audience Response System (PB-ARS), as an adjunctive pedagogy tool to enhance the retention of orthodontic information by dental students; and to explore the students’ perception of PB-ARS. Methods: This cross-over clustered randomised control trial included 34 males who were in the final year of their undergraduate dental training. Participants were allocated to one of two event groups (G1 and G2) using computer-generated randomisation. Both groups simultaneously attended two different traditional lectures (L 1 and L2) a week apart. During L1, PB-ARS was used as an adjunct to conventional presentation to teach G1 participants, (PB-ARS group) while G2’s participants acted as a control group (CG), and were taught using a traditional presentation. In the second week (L2), the interventions were crossed-over. Participants from both groups completed pre- and post-lecture multiple-choice questionnaires (MCQ) to assess their short-term retention of information. Their performance in the final MCQ exam (10 weeks following L2) was tracked to assess the long-term retention of the information. Participants also completed post-lecture questionnaires to evaluate their perceptions. Results: 29 and 31 participants from the CG and PB-ARS group completed this trial, respectively. Although 87.5% of students in the PB-ARS group showed an improvement in their immediate post-lecture scores compared with 79.3% for the CG, it was statistically insignificant (p= 0.465). Similarly, the intervention showed an insignificant effect on the long-term retention of the knowledge (p=0.560).There was a mildly but favourable attitude of students towards the use of PB-ARS. However, the difference in the overall level of satisfaction between both groups was statistically insignificant (p=0.183).Conclusion: PB-ARS has a minimal and insignificant effect on the short- and long-term retention of orthodontic knowledge by male undergraduate dental students. PB-ARS was the preferred adjunct tool to conventional classroom teaching. Due to the limitations of this trial, a long-term randomised controlled trial with a larger sample size is recommended.