Mobile learning practices and preferences a way forward in enhancing dental education learning experience

Abstract

Objective: To explore undergraduate dental students' mobile technological preferences and their use in learning and patient management in dentistry. Materials and Methods: An online survey questionnaire (62 Questions in five parts) was designed to investigate the impact of mobile technology in dental education amongst the Bachelor in Dental Science and Graduate Dental Science (1 st -5 th year) students, at the School of Dentistry, Griffith University, Australia. Participation was voluntary. Results: In total, 251 dental students consented to participate in the study. The majority of participants were in the age group of 18-25 (65.3%). Mobile devices were used by 93.2% of the respondents for various activities including for educational purposes. Laptops and smartphones' ownership was almost similar; however, 75.7% favoured laptop as the primary device for resource storage, study, research, and organization of study materials. Social media were used by 52% of the 5th year respondents for studies and course-related activities. Majority of the students (78.8%) indicated that mobile devices with their software applications could positively assist in patient education and management; however, the relative lack of user-friendly quality applications meant that only 15%-25% of students used software applications for these purposes. Conclusion: The large student ownership of mobile devices and increased interest in its use to enhance learning experiences should encourage universities and software developers to funding research into mobile learning.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Barriers in Distance Education Using Smartphones among Pediatric Dentistry Master Degree students during COVID-19 Pandemic in Egypt: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Regarding smartphones utilization, the results revealed that all the respondents had mobile phones, these findings come in accordance with the results of Bhuvaneshwari et al [16] . Moreover, the results showed that participants mainly used android or apple as operating systems, this comes in line with findings of Nisar [25] and Manakil and George [26] who also reported that android or iphone technology were the preferred operating systems. In the present study, more than half of the respondents (57.4%) used android operated smartphones, this may be attributed to their cheaper price and ease of use.…”

“…In the present study, a significantly high percentage of the respondents (68.9%) were aware of mobile phone apps in dentistry that are used for training or teaching purposes. On the contrary, Manakil and George [26] and Suner et al [28] reported that only 25% and 34.56% of their respondents respectively, used software applications on their smartphones that are helpful in dental education. This difference may be related to the scientific degree of the respondents as the participants in the current questionnaire were post graduate students who are more likely to be acquainted by the different applications that can help them in their clinical practice, while the participants in the other studies were under graduate students who may be less aware of these applications.…”