Impact of Innovative Practices Adopted in the Dental Preclinical Labs Post COVID-19 on Student Performance Based on Skills and Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractThe coronavirus-induced disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the March 11, 2020. This Pandemic has resulted in the largest disruption of the education sector across the globe. Alternatively, this crisis has also induced path-breaking reforms to the global education system in the recent past. With evolving technology, online teaching has become the most convenient mode for lectures and discussions. This acute transformation caused a challenging environment to conduct laboratory sessions for students by adhering to social distancing. Alternatively, delivering the preclinical dental laboratory exercises through online mode was the only available option globally. This paper enlightens a few of the innovative techniques employed in conducting online preclinical dental laboratory sessions for the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) students in the College of Dental Medicine at University of Sharjah. The study aimed at comparing the student performance in the dental preclinical labs evaluated based on skills and knowledge before and after the introduction of the innovative practices by online mode. The results of the study showed that the BDS1 students’ overall performance in the preclinical labs after adopting innovative practices was higher (p = 0.000) compared to the original practice of onsite delivery of labs. Students displayed enhanced tooth-carving skills (p = 0.000) with the introduction of online monitoring of tooth morphology labs. Moreover, BDS2 student performance in dental histology and anatomy labs did not show any significant improvement through the online mode of teaching (p = 0.01). Although COVID-19 hit the world abruptly, it helped in creating digital innovative solutions, thereby easing the teaching and learning process in dental education.