Blended Teaching in Undergraduate Dental Education During and Post-COVID-19 Pandemic (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe challenges while providing a unique opportunity to drive the rapid evolvement of higher education, including dentistry. Dental education needs transition toward an increasingly flexible and adaptable approach, such as blended teaching, to better prepare for the current pandemic and beyond. OBJECTIVE This study provides perspectives of senior undergraduate dental students toward blended teaching during and post the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies modifiable factors influencing their potential engagement in blended dental education. METHODS A survey on blended teaching was conducted among final-year undergraduate students at the leading dental school in mainland China during the fall semesters of 2019–2020 and 2022–2023. Thus, the survey items and instruments evaluated students’ satisfaction toward blended teaching during and post the COVID-19 pandemic, assessed their self-perceived preference to participate in blended teaching, compared its strengths to offline or online teaching only, and identified modifiable factors influencing students’ potential engagement in the post-COVID-19 times. RESULTS Final-year undergraduate dental students exhibited a generally positive attitude toward blended teaching during and post-COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, certain types of online/offline learning materials, face-to-face instruction for specific learning activities, and the implementation of active learning approaches were correlated with higher levels of satisfaction with blended teaching. Students preferred incorporating blended teaching into their education in both periods due to its distinct advantages over offline or online teaching only. Factors such as the instability of technical support, poor online–offline integration, and a lack of learning motivation diminished students’ potential engagement. Meanwhile, the factors that enhanced students’ potential engagement included providing high-quality learning materials, improving technical environment, and employing teacher incentives. CONCLUSIONS During and post-COVID-19, final-year dental students exhibit high satisfaction with blended teaching and prefer participating in blended education. This finding underscores the importance of tailored teaching materials, in-person interactions, and active learning methods. Furthermore, high-quality learning materials, technical environment, teacher incentives, learning process evaluation, effective classroom procedures and routines, and ongoing teacher–student interactions must be further improved to address issues of the students’ potential engagement in blended teaching for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.