Acquisition of psychomotor skills in tooth preparation using self-paced instruction

Self-paced instruction whereby students are provided with learning resources and allowed to learn at their own rate--with or without assistance from instructors--is increasingly being used in dental education. The wide diversity of entering dental student experience with psychomotor tasks suggests that preclinical psychomotor skill development should adapt well to self-paced learning. This study compared self-paced instruction to traditional preclinical teaching of psychomotor skills in cavity preparation. Performance by the self-paced class was significantly better than that of the traditional class on two procedures. There were no significant differences among the other procedures tested.