Development of a mobile app to optimize organization and assessment for clinical teaching in dentistry

The aim of the current study was to develop an application for mobile devices that can improve the organization and documentation of clinical teaching in dental schools. The app should include a calendar to organize treatments, an overview of all treatments including the treatment stages, a digital waiting-list for the teacher’s assessment, and a standardized recording of all assessment results. Students and members of a Medical Faculty and a Faculty of Computer Science and Business Information Systems jointly developed the app. Twenty-three students tested the usability after 4 weeks. Next, the new app was tried and tested by n = 79 forth-year students who used it for 2 months during their clinical course. Fifth-year students of the same clinical course who did not use the app constituted the control group. Afterwards, the app was standard implemented in both integrated clinical courses and evaluated after 1 year by the same students both in winter and summer semester. After usability test, the majority of students (81%, n = 18) said they would recommend the app and gave it a mean overall score of 2.0 ± 0.6. Next, course organization and assessment was evaluated by n = 75 fourth-year students (95%) who used the app and by n = 40 control students (74%) who did not use the app. Students who used the app reported significantly better organization of treatment ( p = .002), documentation of treatment ( p = .001), waiting for the teacher’s assessment ( p = .038), overview of treatment sessions ( p = .040), and transparency of grading and assessment ( p = .012). After 12 months, the now fifth-year students still gave very good ratings for the organization of the treatment and the transparency of the grading in both evaluations, so that no significant changes were detectable (organization p = .959 and the rating p = .751). The newly created app improves the organization and evaluation of clinical education and even after 1 year of service, the students still perceive the consistently high advantages of digitization.