Evaluation of the introduction of a dental virtual simulator on the performance of undergraduate dental students in the pre‐clinical operative dentistry course

Abstract

Introduction Virtual reality‐based platforms are becoming increasingly popular in education. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of undergraduate dental students with the introduction of the Moog Simodont dental trainer (VR) within the pre‐clinical curriculum in the direct restoration module of the operative dentistry course using manual and digital methods. Methods Thirty‐two randomly selected year 2 undergraduate students were divided into two groups: group 1, exposed to the Moog Simodont dental trainer (VR) and group 2, no exposure to VR. All students were then evaluated in carrying out a Class I preparation in a single‐blinded fashion. All preparations were evaluated by three assessors using a traditional manual approach and a digital software. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using chi‐square test (alpha = 0.05). Results The number of students who performed satisfactory preparations was more in group 1 (12/16), compared to group 2 (7/16). The percentage of satisfactory domains was significantly higher in group 1, compared to group 2, both in the manual evaluation (83.9% (94/112) and 59.8% (67/112) in groups 1 and 2, respectively) and in the digital evaluation (85.7% (96/112) and 55.4% (62/112) in groups 1 and 2, respectively) (P < .05). There was no significant difference between the manual and digital methods of evaluation with regard to the percentage of satisfactory or unsatisfactory preparations (P > .05). Conclusions The use of the Moog Simodont dental trainer (VR) significantly improved the satisfactory performance of students. The virtual reality simulator may be a valuable adjunct in the undergraduate direct restorations course and for remedial student.

Effectiveness of technology-enhanced teaching and assessment methods of undergraduate preclinical dental skills: a systematic review of randomized controlled clinical trials

“…Nine studies (47.4%) took place in Europe [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], ve studies (26.3%) took place in North America [7,[27][28][29][30], three studies (15.8%) were conducted in Asia [31][32][33], one study (5.2%) was conducted in Oceania [34], and one study (5.2%) did not mention the country setting [35]. One study (5.2%) had a sample size of 9 [7], three studies (15.8%) had a sample size between 11 and 30 [22,28,34], 11 studies (57.9%) had a sample size between 31 and 50 [18-21, 23-26, 31, 33, 35], two studies (10.5%) had a sample size between 51 and 70 [29,32], and two studies (10.5%) had a sample size between 71 and 90 students [27,30].…”

“…One study (5.2%) had a sample size of 9 [7], three studies (15.8%) had a sample size between 11 and 30 [22,28,34], 11 studies (57.9%) had a sample size between 31 and 50 [18-21, 23-26, 31, 33, 35], two studies (10.5%) had a sample size between 51 and 70 [29,32], and two studies (10.5%) had a sample size between 71 and 90 students [27,30]. Seven studies (36.8%) assessed second year undergraduate dental students [7,21,22,27,29,30,33], four (21%) assessed rst year [23][24][25]28], four (21%) assessed fourth year [20,32,34,35], two (10.5%) assessed third year [18,26], one (5.2%) assessed fth year [31], and one (5.2%) assessed a mixture of fourth and fth year [19]. Most of these studies (57.9%) assessed the student's ability in operative dentistry [18, 20-26, 29, 30, 33].…”

“…In total, there were four main types of technology-assessments that were used in all the 19 studies. Ten studies (52.6%) used virtual reality [21-25, 28-31, 33], six studies (31.5%) used a digital scanner [7,20,26,27,32,34], two (10.5%) used augmented reality [18,19], and one (5.2%) used haptic technology [35].…”

“…One study had a low risk of bias [35], 5 had an unclear risk of bias [24,25,[32][33][34], and 13 had a high risk of bias [7,[18][19][20][21][22][23][26][27][28][29][30][31], ( Figure 2). A summary of the percentage of allocation of risk of bias grades in each domain can be seen in Figure 3.…”

“…Out of the total 19 studies, 17 had allocation concealment bias [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], and of these 15 also had another form of selection bias namely, random sequence generation [18][19][20][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Six studies had performance bias in terms of either blinding of the personnel or the participants involved [7,20,[27][28][29][30]. Six studies had concerns regarding incomplete outcome data [7,23,[28][29][30][31].…”