Verification of the Educational Effect of a Unique Dental Education Program for Lower Grades that Incorporates Visual Thinking Strategies

Abstract

 Abstract Visual thinking strategy (VTS) is a method of art appreciation in which viewers converse with each other, and its positive effects on education have been adopted in medical training overseas. We have developed an original dental education program that incorporates VTS and applied it to second-grade students before taking courses in basic and clinical dentistry. This study aimed to verify the educational effects of our novel VTS-assisted program on the training of dental students and to identify practical issues.

 The program consists of three units. In Unit 1 (Day 1) and Unit 2 (Day 2), students were divided into two groups alternately, one for VTS and the other for peer assessment. In Unit 3 (Day 3), all students participated in VTS at once, and then they were asked to consider how VTS would be useful for a dentist in the future by assigning them a report task.

 We found that the students who participated in this program were able to proactively acquire the skills of observation, thinking, and communication, all necessary for dental professionals when building the confidence of patients and team-based medical care. In addition, the incorporation of peer assessment not only enabled the participation of all members of the class, but also contributed to improving their observation and listening skills. The students started to find that the ability to freely imagine stories from viewing paintings is necessary to think about the patient’s background and to empathize with patients from non-verbal cues. However, the students in lower grades seemed unable to distinguish between EBM and NBM, and therefore this aspect should be improved in future VTS-assisted programs.