Evaluation of Introduction of E-learning (WebCT) on Basic Practice in Pediatric Dentistry

Abstract

Recently, development of the ICT promotes utilization of web-based teaching materials in educational institutions. In the undergraduate program of pediatric dentistry at the Dental School, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, web-based e-learning (WebCT) has been introduced to 4^th-year basic practice, since 2007, in order to give students efficient and effective learning.In this study, anonymous surveys, with 11 questions, were conducted in order to verify the contents, usability, and effectiveness of the WebCT by the five-grades. The subjects were 122 4^th-year students of the Dental School and 80 junior residents of the Dental Hospital as controls.Most of the 4^th-year students were positive towards the questions “WebCT helps me understand the outline of the practice” and “WebCT is useful to basic practice”. On the other hand, there were significant differences for the questions “WebCT helps me understand the details of handling” and “WebCT helps me to prepare completely and in a short time” (p＜0.01), between the 4^th-year students and the junior residents. In the open-ended question, the 4^th-year students stated that the WebCT was easy to browse repeatedly and provided images of this basic practice.These results suggested that the introduction of the WebCT that plays video with sound into the basic practice of pediatric dentistry provides understanding of the contents and techniques.