Effectiveness of an adaptive eLearning intervention on dental students’ learning in comparison to traditional instruction

Abstract

There is a great deal of excitement in higher education about the value of adaptive learning to personalize learning paths according to students' individual needs. The authors explored the impact of an Adaptive Learning Platform (ALP) on learning, by comparing learning effectiveness between dental students who used the ALP in a blended learning environment formatively and summatively compared with students who did not use the ALP (i.e., face-to-face), as measured by students' performance on the final exam in a single review preparatory course during the academic years 2013-2018. Paired t-tests showed significant improvement in post-test scores across different course instructional modalities (P < 0.01). The learning gain was greater for students who studied using the ALP summatively (t = 26.20) than those who used it formatively or studied using a faceto-face format (t = 13.10 and 14.13, respectively). Controlling for pre-test scores, analysis of covariance tests indicate that: (1) intervention groups (formative and summative ALP) scored significantly higher than the traditional group (B = 9.34 points, P < 0.01, for summative ALP group) and (B = 4.47 points, P < 0.05, for formative ALP group), and (2) summative ALP group scored significantly higher than formative ALP group (B = 4.84 points, P < 0.05). This study provides empirical evidence that an adaptive learning intervention can have a significant impact 1294

Learning technology in health professions education: Realising an (un)imagined future

“…It focused on matters such as scaling and distributing learning and increasing efficiencies through online activities and assessments 107,108 . Other foci included augmentation of current teaching methods, primarily through the use of additional learning and feedback opportunities, and the use of technology to allow students to visualise more than they would with traditional teaching methods 109–111 . We were however encouraged by a more recent work redefining education through technology 104–106 …”

RoboEthics in COVID-19: A Case Study in Dentistry

“…Additionally, dental students have reported using YouTube to watch videos of dental procedures being performed even before the COVID-19 pandemic (Burns et al, 2020). This evidence suggests that the development of online tools can enhance dental education even after in-person education is resumed (Alwadei et al, 2020;Burns et al, 2020;Jeganathan and Fleming, 2020).…”

“…Further on, robots can act as tutors in one-on-one teaching sessions by personalizing their instructional approach to each individual student, thus improving their student’s performance ( Leyzberg et al, 2014 ). The application of tutor-robots in conjunction with online adaptive learning approaches is a promising area of development for dental education in particular ( Alwadei et al, 2020 ). Peer robots are developed to form an empathetic bond with students, learn alongside human subjects, and collaborate with students to solve problems.…”

Do Flipped Learning and Adaptive Instruction Improve Student Learning Outcome? A Case Study of a Computer Programming Course in Taiwan

“…Only 17 left after removing the completely irrelevant results. Six of these papers mainly study flipped learning (Louhab et al, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2018;Lamia et al, 2019;van Leeuwen, 2019;Janson et al, 2020;Ranellucci et al, 2021), and one is about adaptive learning (Alwadei et al, 2020). Among the 10 papers on these two topics (flipped and adaptive), three are reviews or discourse analysis papers (Chi et al, 2018;Narang et al, 2018;Smale-Jacobse et al, 2019), and seven focus on the topic of flipped teaching combined with adaptive e-learning platforms (Fang et al, 2019;Kaw et al, 2019;Clark and Kaw, 2020;Louhab et al, 2020;Mojtahedi et al, 2020;Hsieh et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2021).…”