Development of a Case/Problem-Based and Teamwork-Focused Applied Physiology Course to Graduate Students Planning to Apply to Dental School

Abstract

The Master of Science in Oral Health Sciences (OHS) at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine is explicitly designed for students who wish to improve their academic preparedness for dental school admission. Oral Health Sciences students take some courses, including the first-year Dental Physiology course, alongside dental students at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM). Since students in the OHS program often struggle in the largely lecture-based Dental Physiology course, we developed a case/problem-based and teamwork-focused Applied Physiology course that ran parallel to the Dental Physiology course in the fall of 2023. The primary goal of the Applied Physiology course is to provide additional instruction and academic support and to present course material in a team-based learning mode for the OHS students. We hypothesized this approach to learning physiology would help to improve student mastery of physiology content critical to their future success. The objective of the current study was to assess the effectiveness of the new Applied Physiology course in enhancing OHS students' motivation and academic performance in the Dental Human Physiology course. We are evaluating the benefits of this course by comparing Dental Physiology final grades and individual exam grades between dental students and OHS students. In addition, we are comparing course performance for OHS students from previous class years who did not take the Applied Physiology course against students from the current academic year who took the course. Our preliminary results indicate students who took the Applied Physiology course in the fall of 2023 performed better in the Dental Physiology course than last year’s OHS students. The mean grade for Dental and OHS students in Dental Physiology in the fall of 2023 was 82.3% ± 12.3% and 80.3% ± 13.9% respectively. In contrast, the mean grades for Dental students in the fall of 2022 was 82.7% ± 8%, while OHS students’ mean was much lower at 74.7% ± 11%. Analysis and comparisons for individual course exams for the dental and OHS students are ongoing. In addition, analysis of a validated survey containing Likert-style questions to quantify how the new course enhances motivation, engagement, and perceived benefits of student learning is underway. Our results indicate that additional team and case/problem-based support can improve academic performance for students hoping to gain admission to Dental School. No funding for this project. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.