German dental faculty attitudes towards computer-assisted learning and their correlation with personal and...

Compared with its potential, computer technology use is still lacking in medical/dental education.

To investigate the primary advantages of computer-assisted learning (CAL) systems in German dental education, as well as the reasons for their relatively low degree of use correlated with personal and professional profiles of respondents.

A questionnaire was mailed to heads in the departments of conservative dentistry and prosthetic dentistry in all dental schools in Germany. Besides investigating the advantages and barriers to the use of computer technology, the questionnaire also contained questions regarding each respondent's gender, age, academic rank, experience in academia and computer skills.

The response rate to the questionnaire was 90% (112 of 125). The results indicated a distinct discrepancy between the desire for and actual occurrence of lectures, seminars, etc. to instruct students in ways to search for and acquire knowledge, especially using computer technology. The highest-ranked advantages of CAL systems in order, as seen by respondents, were the possibilities for individual learning, increased motivation, and both objective theoretical tests and practical tests. The highest-ranked reasons for the low degree of usage of CAL systems in order were the inability to finance, followed equally by a lack of studies of CAL and poor cost-advantage ratio, and too much effort required to integrate CAL into the curriculum. Moreover, the higher the computer skills of the respondents, the more they noted insufficient quality of CAL systems (r = 0.200, P = 0.035) and content differences from their own dental faculty's expert opinions (r = 0.228, P = 0.016) as reasons for low use.

The correlations of the attitudes towards CAL with the personal and professional profiles showed not only statistical significant reinforcements of, but also interesting deviations from, the average responses.