Department of Restorative Dentistry, Dental School, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78229, USA.
J Dent Educ. 2010 Feb;74(2):110-22.
Advances in information and communication technology continually offer innovations to assist faculty in their efforts to help students learn new information or develop new skills. However, faculty members are often hesitant to incorporate these innovations into their courses out of fear that these new methods may not provide the anticipated outcomes. Hence, students are often the subjects of educational trials to evaluate curriculum innovations by comparing a new teaching/learning method to traditional lecture-based instruction. The most typical finding is that students can learn equally well by either method. However, two questions that have not been studied extensively in dental education are whether dental students will actually use computer-based educational resources made available to them and whether students perceive these materials to provide a value-added learning experience. Accordingly, the goals of this study were to determine whether first-year dental students (D1), second-year dental students (D2), and third-year dental students (D3) would 1) use an interactive tooth atlas, available on a DVD, as a study aid and 2) perceive that the atlas provided sufficient value-added benefit for their dental anatomy (D1), preclinical laboratory endodontics (D2), and clinical endodontics (D3) courses to recommend adding it to their school's comprehensive electronic resources. A low percentage of the students (14 percent; 40/289) voluntarily downloaded the atlas from a DVD to their laptops prior to the addition of incentives in the form of atlas-related examination questions. Even after incentives were added, only 43 percent of the students (126/289) downloaded the DVD. After using the atlas, students responded to the statement "Using the 3D Interactive Tooth Atlas was beneficial for me" on a 0 to 10 scale with 0 representing strongly disagree, 5 representing unsure, and 10 representing strongly agree. The mean rankings were 5.34 for D1s, 6.79 for D2s, and 7.28 for D3s. Students also responded to the statement "The atlas should be added to our school's VitalBook" (digital library of curriculum materials). The mean rankings for this statement, using the same 0-10 scale, were 5.15 for the D1s, 6.63 for the D2s, and 7.26 for the D3s. Based upon these findings, the course directors decided not to add this atlas to the students' electronic resources.
信息技术的进步不断为教师提供创新，以帮助他们帮助学生学习新信息或发展新技能。然而，教师往往因为担心这些新方法可能无法达到预期的效果而不愿意将这些创新融入他们的课程中。因此，学生通常是教育试验的对象，通过将新的教学/学习方法与传统的基于讲座的教学进行比较来评估课程创新。最典型的发现是，学生可以通过任何一种方法同等地学习。然而，在牙科学教育中，有两个问题尚未得到广泛研究：一是牙科学生是否会实际使用提供给他们的基于计算机的教育资源，二是学生是否认为这些材料提供了增值的学习体验。因此，本研究的目的是确定一年级牙科学生（D1）、二年级牙科学生（D2）和三年级牙科学生（D3）是否会：1）将 DVD 上的交互式牙齿图谱作为学习辅助工具，2）认为图谱为他们的牙科解剖学（D1）、临床前实验室牙髓学（D2）和临床牙髓学（D3）课程提供了足够的增值收益，从而推荐将其添加到学校的综合电子资源中。只有 14%（40/289）的学生在没有激励措施（与图谱相关的考试问题）的情况下自愿从 DVD 上下载图谱到他们的笔记本电脑上。即使在增加了激励措施之后，也只有 43%的学生（126/289）下载了 DVD。在使用图谱后，学生在 0 到 10 的量表上对“使用 3D 交互式牙齿图谱对我有益”这句话做出回应，0 表示强烈不同意，5 表示不确定，10 表示强烈同意。一年级学生的平均排名为 5.34，二年级学生为 6.79，三年级学生为 7.28。学生还对“图谱应该添加到我们学校的 VitalBook（课程材料数字图书馆）中”这句话做出了回应。使用相同的 0-10 量表，这句话的平均排名分别为一年级学生 5.15，二年级学生 6.63，三年级学生 7.26。根据这些发现，课程负责人决定不将该图谱添加到学生的电子资源中。
