Assessing Students’ Perspectives of an Elective Digital Dentistry Course

Abstract

This brief report examines students’ perspectives on teaching from a small size of fourth year dental students and Internationally Trained Dentists II candidates on an experiential learning digital dentistry elective course. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 10 dental students before and after the course. Each question was rated on a five-point Likert scale. The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used. All data analysis was conducted by Excel at the 0.05 level of significance. The results indicated that after receiving the course the mean of students’ perspectives varied more. The medians varied before and after the course. There was a 90% improvement that was detected in the students’ perspectives after the course. All of the students (100%) reported an improvement in knowledge with the digital scanner after the course. Although students’ perspectives demonstrated a change in almost all the participants (90%) after receiving the course, this change was not statistically significant. There was no significant difference in students’ knowledge of digital dentistry before and after receiving the course. Conclusion: The dental profession is rapidly changing technologically. It seems appropriate that dental education should include digital dentistry and a suitable number of student participants.