Making use of the technologically advanced environment, the blended curriculum fostered student-focused learning to develop the didactic and laboratory skills necessary for competency in a pre-clinical setting.
Little is known about self-directed and self-relective assessment in preclinical dental curricula. The aim of this study was to evaluate a visual dental anatomy teaching tool to train dental students to self-assess their dental anatomy wax carving practical examinations. The students self-assessed two waxing practical examinations (tooth #8 and tooth #19) using high-quality digital images in an assessment tool incorporated into a digital testing program. Student self-assessments were compared to the faculty evaluations and the results of a software-based evaluation tool (E4D Compare). Out of a total 130 irst-year dental students at one U.S. dental school, wax-ups from 57 participants were available for this study. The assessment data were submitted to statistical analyses (p<0.05). For tooth #8, the student self-assessments were signiicantly different from the faculty and software assessments at a 400 micrometer level of tolerance (p=0.036), whereas the faculty assessment was not signiicantly different from the software assessment at a 300 micrometer level of tolerance (p=0.69). The evaluation of tooth #19 resulted in no signiicant differences between faculty members (p=0.94) or students (p=0.21) and the software at a level of tolerance of 400 micrometers. This study indicates that students can learn to self-assess their work using self-relection in conjunction with faculty guidance and that it may be possible to use software-based evaluation tools to assist in faculty calibration and as objective grading tools.
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