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Does a mobile interactive web application improve dental students' panoramic radiograph interpretation skills? A
Beyza Yalvaç Pınarbaşı1,2, Kemal Selçuk Yücel3, Deniz Ezgi Şakalakoğlu4
1Kahramanmaraş Oral and Dental Health Hospital, Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye. yalvacbeyzaa@gmail.com.
Background:
This study aims to evaluate the impact of a newly developed, mobile-compatible web application on the learning process of dental interns, specifically focusing on its effectiveness in the interpretation of panoramic radiographs.
Methods:
The study included 60 third-year dental students. For educational purposes, a total of 61 anatomical regions and landmarks in both jaws, 20 intraosseous pathologies, and 26 dental materials with distinct radiographic appearances were identified. The educational intervention consisted of a self-paced, two consecutive 30-min interactive session in which students accessed the application via their mobile devices. During this session, participants navigated high-resolution radiographic images featuring interactive labels and descriptive annotations. Two 15-question surveys were developed in accordance with the learning content-one administered before and the other after the intervention. These surveys were delivered through the PanYoda platform. The normality of paired differences was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test. As normality assumptions were not met, pre- and post-training scores were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Learning gain, normalized learning gain (Hake g) was calculated to quantify the magnitude of educational improvement. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results:
The mean pre-training score increased from 65.92 ± 2.13 and 80.33 ± 2.21 after the educational intervention, yielding an average learning gain of 14.01 percentage points. The normalized learning gain indicated moderate improvement (g = 0.41). The Wilcoxon effect size was large (r = 0.87), suggesting a substantial difference between pre- and post-training scores. The improvement was statistically significant (p < 0.01).
Conclusions:
The findings suggest that the mobile-based educational application was associated with improved short-term radiographic interpretation performance. By providing interactive and immediate access to reference data at the point of care, the platform addresses some limitations of conventional analog and desktop-based resources and may serve as an effective and accessible supplement to contemporary dental education.
Trial Registration:
Not applicable.