Design and Development of Mobile Based Application for Competency Oriented Dental Education

Abstract

Abstract Background: Teaching, Learning and Asssessment in Competency Based Dental Education need to be digitally captured in an user friendly manner which can be accessed by students and mentor which would be useful for continuous monitoring, periodic assessment and maintenance of a digital record. Methods: A novel customised mobile based application MSCORE© developed for competency oriented dental training among undergraduate interns of an institute. Initial perception on the use of the application was recorded using a questionnaire from the entire batch of interns. Factor Analysis was done to check the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Results: From the 30-item questionnaire, factor analysis extracted four aforementioned factors and reliability was found for 22 questions. Sixty-three percent of students felt that the application is easy to learn. Overall high scores were recorded for 71% of the students. Eighty-five percent of the students scored high on the suitability of the task. Seventy three scored the high on the satisfaction scale. However, advantages over existing written methods scored high only among 49% of the students. Conclusions: Mobile application-based mentoring, monitoring and assessment can be a better alternative to conventional models as it was found to demonstrate good perception by the digital natives of the present generation.