Dentistry students’ perceptions regarding the use of educational resources applied to the demonstration of simulated procedures, at the University of Antofagasta.

Abstract

The perception of dentistry students at the University of Antofagasta was determined regarding three educational resources applied to a simulation procedure demonstration in the course of fixed prosthesis I at the University of Antofagasta, in 2016. A quantitative, observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on third-year students taking the annual Fixed Prosthesis I course in 2016 (n = 61). A structured questionnaire was used to measure their perception regarding three teaching resources used in the first semester for the demonstration of different simulation procedures. A descriptive analysis was carried out and significant differences were analyzed according to sex, using Fisher's test (p <0.05). 88.5% of the students responded to the questionnaire. The teaching resource preferred by the students, and consequently the one they would like to use regularly for the procedure learning was the teacher´s demonstration to a group of students (48.15%), followed by a video available online (31.48%) and a live video (20.37%). No statistically significant differences were found in the preference of responses to the questionnaire among students according to their sex. The teacher´s demonstration to a group of students was the most frequently selected teaching resource to better understand and execute the procedure and integrate the theoretical and practical contents, while the online video demonstration was preferred for delivering the procedure in a clear, sequential, easy-to-understand, and standardized manner, giving a unified evaluation criterion and allowing better visibility of the procedure. The live video had a low level of preference in the group studied.