2024 Volume 40 Issue 3 Pages 119-124
Abstract Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) has been shown to be effective in improving observation skills, but there have been few reports of its use in dental education. We examined the effect of VTS on the observational skills of dental students and its assessment instruments. Fourteen groups, 90 clinical students, participated in the VTS sessions. The sessions were conducted twice per group following the standard format of the VTS with facilitation by the faculty. In the pre/post-test, students were asked to describe the findings of intraoral photographs and radiographs, and their observational skills were assessed based on the number of observations and the content of their descriptions. Each group was assigned to one of two groups, one using different images for the pre/post-test (group D) and the other using the same images (group S). The pre-test was identical for groups D and S. The number of observations increased significantly in post-test for both groups (intraoral photographs : from 5.4 to 6.4 items in group D ; from 5.2 to 7.6 items in group S) (radiographs : from 3.5 to 4.4 items in group D ; from 3.1 to 4.2 items in group S). Regarding the content of the descriptions, while the pre-test consisted only of visual information, the post-test included descriptions of the causes and background. Furthermore, considering that the pre/post-tests were applied to the students’ self-reflection, it seemed to be more effective to use the same images.
