Dashash Mayssoon, Alkhadragy Rania, Scanlan Gillian M
Faculty of Dentistry, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria.
Centre for Medical Education, School of Medicine, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 3;10(13):e34045. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e34045. eCollection 2024 Jul 15.
Several learning modalities have been implemented to improve learning about Traumatic Dental Injuries (TDIs) worldwide. Free online courses about TDIs might be an effective and convenient approach for equipping Syrian dentists with essential competencies during the Syrian crisis. Therefore, this qualitative study with a descriptive phenomenological method was undertaken to explore the lived experience of Syrian dentists enrolled in an online course about TDIs and investigate areas requiring improvement.
Ethical approval was obtained from the Faculty of Dentistry, Damascus University, and the University of Dundee. Educational contents of the TDI course were developed. About 10 dentists who completed the TDI course, were interviewed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to identify emerging themes. Inductive thematic analysis was performed to extract all data.
About 10 clustered categories were first developed and this has led to the emergence of 3 themes that represent the lived experience including usefulness, challenges, and recommendations. Participants were so motivated and keen to take advantage of the course despite the personal, technical problems, and crisis-related challenges. TDIs course was effective for general and specialists despite the challenges they experienced. Factors that lead to effective TDIs courses as reported by participants were flexibility in time and location, interactivity with colleagues, other commitments, quantity and quality of content, easiness, and variety of virtual environment tools. Conversely, negative attitudes were linked to factors like lack of interest, unfamiliarity with the learning environment and tools, late participation, lack of confidence, anxiety about independent learning and insufficient interactivity and engagement tools.
Syrian dentists can benefit from online courses if constraints and various learning needs are addressed during the design and delivery of online courses. Future work is still required to identify other effective instructional modalities that equip Syrian dentists to overcome challenges and enhance their learning.
全球已采用多种学习方式来改善对创伤性牙损伤（TDIs）的学习。在叙利亚危机期间，免费的TDIs在线课程可能是使叙利亚牙医具备基本能力的一种有效且便捷的方法。因此，本研究采用描述性现象学方法进行定性研究，以探索参加TDIs在线课程的叙利亚牙医的生活经历，并调查需要改进的领域。
获得了大马士革大学牙科学院和邓迪大学的伦理批准。开发了TDI课程的教育内容。对约10名完成TDI课程的牙医进行了访谈。对访谈进行录音、转录和分析，以确定新出现的主题。进行归纳主题分析以提取所有数据。
首先形成了约10个聚类类别，由此产生了3个代表生活经历的主题，包括有用性、挑战和建议。尽管存在个人、技术问题以及与危机相关的挑战，参与者仍积极性很高并渴望利用该课程。尽管经历了各种挑战，但TDI课程对全科医生和专科医生都很有效。参与者报告的使TDI课程有效的因素包括时间和地点的灵活性、与同事的互动性、其他事务、内容的数量和质量、简易性以及虚拟环境工具的多样性。相反，消极态度与缺乏兴趣、不熟悉学习环境和工具、参与较晚、缺乏信心、对自主学习的焦虑以及互动和参与工具不足等因素有关。
如果在在线课程的设计和交付过程中解决限制因素和各种学习需求，叙利亚牙医可以从在线课程中受益。仍需要开展进一步的工作来确定其他有效的教学方式，以使叙利亚牙医能够克服挑战并增强学习效果。
