Enhancing the lab skills of Dental Students: A Blended Learning approach

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Blended learning is a teaching methodology that is an amalgamation of face-to-face teaching and online teaching methods. Using blended learning of traditional live demonstrations and educational videos helps the students boost their skills further and gain confidence in the laboratory work. Shifa College of Dentistry follows an integrated curriculum. The removable partial denture sessions for the first and second-year students are mainly pre-clinical skill sessions in the Prosthodontic laboratory.AIMS: We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of blended teaching and learning strategies for the skill sessions of Prosthodontics by providing the students with pre-reading materials along with instructional videos before the skill sessions. Scores of pre-test and post-test were analyzed. Student’s views were also collected regarding blended teaching methodology.METHODOLOGY: The study was conducted with second-year students at Shifa College of Dentistry, Shifa Tameer E Millat University. It is a mixed-method study. The 50 students were divided into groups A and B. Only group B was exposed to educational videos, learning materials, and conventional teaching. The assessment results of group B were compared with the results of the controlled group A. Two Focus groups were conducted with the students of Group B to gather their views.RESULTS: The results showed a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test of both groups with a P-value of 0.007. These findings suggest that the students exposed to the videos had improved grades after the intervention. In focus group interview the students believed that the blended learning approach in pre-clinical skills session has improved their knowledge, attitude, and psychomotor skills for the fabrication of acrylic partial dentures. Both methods of instruction live demonstrations and educational videos are essential as one is interactive and the other provides them an opportunity to watch the videos according to the availability of time and educational needs with a better vision of the skills being performed by the instructors.CONCLUSION: The results support that blended learning with video presentation along with traditional hands-on demonstrations in the Prosthodontic pre-clinical sessions helped students improve their knowledge, achievement of competencies, and psychomotor skills development.