Haptic simulators with virtual reality environments in dental education: A preliminary teaching diagnosis

A descriptive exploratory study was performed at the Universidad Europea in Madrid with a sample of 22 professors of dentistry with a distinguished career in simulation. A community of practice of was created for collaborative learning using the Simondont® Dental Trainer, a dental training simulator developed by Moog and the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA) that combines haptic and virtual reality interfaces.   A post-experimental questionnaire was administered to assess the performance of the Simondont® and to determine whether or not the professors would be willing to incorporate it into their curriculum. IBM SPSS Statistics V21.0 software was used for the data analysis and statistics of mean, standard deviation and correlation of the results. Tables and box plots were developed applying Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Kruskal-Wallis tests, with a level of significance of ?=0.05. The results indicated that the educational contributions of the Simodont® exceeded its technical features. In addition, an inverse relationship was described between the variables Age and Ease of use of the simulator. It became apparent that the use of state-of-the-art technology begins to decrease as teaching age increases. This indicated the need to train faculty in the use of the technology and in the introduction of innovative teaching methods to make the best use of the basic and additional opportunities the simulator offers.