A novel scale to measure students' perceptions of exemplars in a dental school

Exemplars are an effective strategy for initial cognitive and psychomotor skill acquisition and promoting students' self-regulation. Yet, there is limited evidence about students' use and perception of exemplars in dental education. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a scale to measure students' perception of exemplars in an Australian dental school.

Phase I assessed the relevant literature and students' responses to an interview. Four themes were identified for developing a 19-item questionnaire rated by an expert panel. Phase II piloted the questionnaire amongst a group of 30 students. Phase III analysed psychometric and qualitative open-ended questions data obtained from a large group of students.

The principal axis factoring resulted in one single factor that explained over 62% of the variance and had an alpha of .88. The number of questions was reduced from 19 to 6 items with loadings of 0.72 or above for each item. Students reported exemplars are beneficial for their learning and to visually guide them to understand procedures and their intended outcomes. This prompts them to think and mentally prepare before performing. Students further reported using exemplars provided by their courses almost as often as exemplars they search in social media.

Well-developed exemplars could play a key role in enhancing learning and could assist teaching. Understanding students' use and perception of exemplars will help educators to develop and evaluate appealing exemplars. Therefore, this study developed a new instrument to measure students' perception of exemplars, verified its reliability and validity.