The Effect of Live-Video Demonstration on Dental Students' Orthodontic Bending Performance

The aims of this study were to evaluate the effects of a live-video teaching tool on the performance of dental students in bending an orthodontic vestibular arch and to assess the students' perceptions of the technology. All 135 fourth-year dental students in the 2018 academic year at Hacettepe Dental School, Ankara, Turkey, were invited to participate in the study; after exclusions, the remaining 116 were randomly divided into two demonstration cohorts. These students had no prior experience bending an orthodontic wire. Cohort 1 (control, N=58) was shown a conventional live demonstration of the orthodontic bending of a vestibular arch, and Cohort 2 (experimental, N=58) was shown a live-video demonstration of the same procedure. Both cohorts saw the demonstration before beginning the exercise and were evaluated afterwards on their performance of the procedure. In addition, the students' perceptions of the demonstration techniques were collected with a questionnaire. The results did not show any significant differences in the students' bending scores between the control and experimental cohorts (p=0.767). The median values on the questionnaire indicated almost no statistically significant difference in responses between the cohorts. The only significant difference was that Cohort 1 had a higher percentage who answered "yes" they would like to rewatch the demonstration than did Cohort 2 (p=0.024). In this study, the live-video technique was found to be as effective as a conventional live demonstration for orthodontic practical education, suggesting that either technique could be used as an appropriate method for training in orthodontic wire bending.