Abstract
As with other university programs, dental school has been affected during the Covid-19 pandemic due to physical distancing and clinical restriction. Covid-19 pandemic changes the original method of study with the swift shift to online learning, which may affect students’ performance. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of online learning methods on the final examination performance for dental undergraduate students in their clinical years in a public university in Malaysia. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc Tukey tests were conducted to compare the effect of learning methods on the mean examination score, by comparing clinical students from the year of 2018 and 2019 face-to-face (f2f) learning method as compared to fully online learning in 2020. The analysis shows that there is a statistically significant difference on final exam performance at p < 0.05 for Year 3 [F (2, 102) = 11.68] and Year 5 [F(2, 95) = 22.32]. Post-hoc Tukey HSD test indicates that the mean examination result for 2019 is significantly different from 2020 and 2018 even though the same learning method was employed for the latter. There was also no statistically significant difference for when the 2020 cohort is compared to the 2018 cohort for both Year 3 and Year 5. There was no statistically significant difference in mean examination score across all cohorts for Year 4 students. Although limited in scope, the conclusion of this study was that, f2f learning method has no significant difference with online learning in terms of final examination performance.
Highlights
In 2015, Bill Gates gave a TED talk entitled ‘The outbreak? We’re not ready’ about the trend of past pandemics and how the world should be prepared to face the one that can kill millions of people worldwide (TED, 2015)
Questions arise when Standard operating procedures (SOP) requires physical distancing in the practical sessions and all f2f classes were shifted to an online learning: what are the effects of this shift to the students? The objective of this study is to assess the effect of pre-pandemic vs present learning methods on the examination performance among undergraduate dental students for three different cohorts
The result from one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis in Table 3 shows that learning methods have a statistically significant impact on exam performance at the level of p < 0.05 for Year 3, F(2, 102) = 11.68, p = 0.000 and Year 5 F(2, 95) = 22.32 p = 0.000 at the level of p < 0.05
Summary
We’re not ready’ about the trend of past pandemics and how the world should be prepared to face the one that can kill millions of people worldwide (TED, 2015). Dental treatment is an aerosol-generating procedure in which the high-speed handpiece used during dental procedure is rotating up to 200,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) while spewing droplets of saliva and blood at high speed from patients’ airways. These small droplets, that remain suspended in air over the treatment area for a few hours before settling on surfaces, are hazardous for cross infection (Luzzi, 2021). This hazard is amplified due to the proximity of operators to patients with high aerosol exposure during treatment procedure (Ayatollahi et al, 2012)
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