In recent decades, a noticeable trend has emerged in medical and dental schools to adjust their curricula to promote learning strategies and habits geared towards long-term knowledge retention. This systematic review therefore sought to examine whether different teaching methods influence students' preferred learning approaches (deep, strategic,…

Like other health care practices, the increasing complexity in dentistry signals the need for a reconceptualisation of dentist professional learning. Professional dental bodies, at large, still privilege formal continuing professional development (CPD) provisions focusing on off-the-job activities despite growing evidence that much invaluable…

Anatomy forms the foundation for the training and execution of routine surgical procedures. However, a gap persists in effectively bridging anatomical knowledge with the confident performance of procedures. Virtual simulation (VS) techniques, based on experiential and situated learning theory, hold promise in addressing this challenge.…

Dental anatomy is an integrated, core fundamental dental course, which prepares students for all future clinical dental courses. This study aimed to build up an online dental learning platform of micro-computed tomography-based three-dimensional (3D) tooth models with pulp cavity, and to further evaluate its effectiveness for dental anatomy…

Interpreting radiographic lesions on dental radiographs is a challenging process especially for novice learners, and there is a lack of tools available to support this diagnostic process. This study introduced dental students to two diagnostic aids with contrasting reasoning approaches--ORAD DDx, which uses an analytic, forward reasoning approach,…

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to explore the impact of instructional methodologies by examining the relative achievements of face-to-face and virtual instruction of dental hygiene students during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic's lockdown precautions led educational institutions to shift from traditional…

Game-based learning (GBL) is an effective learning tool for medical and dental undergraduates in enhancing knowledge and skills as well as gaining student engagement and motivation. Educational games can create a social constructivist learning environment, where learners can construct their knowledge through interactions with their peers and…

Signature pedagogies are widely used in professional education to prepare students for the complex and unpredictable nature of professional work. We argue that assessment moments involving professional artefacts contribute to the evaluation and formation of professional knowledge, skills and moral understandings -- and thus to the signature of the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented worldwide challenges to all levels of dental education, specifically teaching face-to-face preclinical content remotely. When students and educators were suddenly required to stay home and continue their studies, anxiety increased for all. Although a few studies exist on the impact this challenge has had on…

The purpose of this study was two-fold: to assess the current status of ethics education and to create a model ethics education curriculum for dental hygiene programs to address issues with current thinking in ethics education. To this end, the structure and sequence of randomly selected dental hygiene programs' ethics education curricula were…

While light microscopy (LM) and virtual microscopy (VM) are valuable pedagogical approaches in histology education, studies comparing their effectiveness have primarily emanated from North America. This research aimed to compare the performance, satisfaction, and perception of Chinese undergraduate dental students enrolled in a histology…

The provision of undergraduate statistics teaching varies across UK dental schools, but some challenges are faced in all schools. These include the need to (i) demonstrate the relevance of statistics to dentistry, (ii) address the phenomenon of statistical anxiety likely to be experienced, and (iii) deliver the teaching with a limited number of…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sometimes display an inability for information sharing through functional verbal communication. This may interfere with professional oral care. These children tend to process visual information more efficiently than auditory information. Picture schedules can briefly suffice as visual cues serving a…

Digital transformation in education and relevant calls for action are recognised global priorities aimed to support education and training in the digital age. The experiences from the emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and recent research findings reveal relevant advantages, challenges, as well as different students and…

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact, and students' and teachers' perceptions, of using smartphones as clickers during formal lectures. This was an observational study based on a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. Forty French dental students received conventional lectures, and 40 additionally used the Socrative®…