Virtual dental teaching and its effect on test success - A cross-over study

Area of Science:

• Dental Education
• Medical Simulation
• Virtual Reality Applications

Background:

• Traditional dental education relies on conventional methods for teaching tooth morphology.
• Assessing the impact of emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR) is crucial for modernizing dental curricula.
• Preclinical dental students' prior experience may influence their learning with new tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) as a supplementary tool in preclinical dental education.
• To determine if VR-based learning impacts student test performance in identifying tooth morphology.
• To investigate if prior dental professional experience modifies the effect of VR on learning outcomes.

Main Methods:

• A cross-over study involving 82 preclinical dental students divided into two groups.
• Group 1 used VR for anterior tooth morphology, Group 2 for posterior tooth morphology, alongside conventional learning.
• Students were tested on tooth recognition and characteristics after 3 and 6 weeks, with data analyzed using statistical tests.

Main Results:

• No significant overall improvement in test scores was observed with VR use.
• Students using VR for anterior teeth showed a tendency towards better posterior teeth test scores.
• Anterior teeth test scores were predominantly better than posterior teeth test scores, irrespective of VR use.

Conclusions:

• The virtual reality tooth learning environment did not significantly enhance preclinical dental students' test performance.
• Anterior teeth morphology was learned more effectively than posterior teeth morphology in this study.
• VR shows limited impact on improving dental student test scores for tooth morphology identification.