The use of video-clips as a teaching aide

Video-clips of tooth preparations recorded with a digital head-mounted camera replaced live demonstrations midway in a preclinical operative dentistry course. DVDs of the video-clips were made available to the students for home use.

The aim of this study was to determine whether the use of these video-clips had any impact on students' practical examination results and to analyse students' opinions of this new technology and the perceived impact on their learning.

A questionnaire was administered to all students (n = 26) who completed the course, asking their opinions on the video-clips. The results of student practical examinations before the introduction of the camera were compared with those after the video-clips were available and also to the examination outcomes of the previous year's students (ANOVA, P < 0.05).

Twenty-one students completed the questionnaire. Sixteen students (76%) preferred the video-clips to the live demonstrations, and 12 students (57%) made and reviewed the DVDs at home. They expressed a preference for the videos to be made available online or as podcasts. Twelve students (57%) felt that one-to-one supervision was more effective developing their competence in tooth preparations when compared to their viewing of the video-clips. There were no statistically significant differences between the practical examination results.

In this group of students, video-clips were the preferred method of demonstration of tooth preparations in the preclinical environment. However, students perceived their learning to be facilitated more by one-to-one supervision. The students preferred to have the video-clips made available to them online instead of in the form of a DVD. The introduction of this educational aide did not make a difference in practical examination results.