Improving Interactive E-learning in Oral-and-Maxillofacial Surgery for Dental Students

Objectives: E-learning has been recognized during recent years as an essential tool to improve dental education. But the overload of information as well as the manner of how computer-assisted learning can be better provided is continuously being discussed. Since 2007 we develop and evaluate an interactive e-learning surrounding to improve the coordination between education content and performance requirements. Aim of this study was to analyze the acceptance of this kind of learning support among dental students.

Methods: An interactive e-learning-database focussing on of the Dental Curriculum (DC) based on the concept of the ADEE (Association for Dental Education in Europe) with implementation of modular levels to improve the reconcilement between DC and the dental performance requirements was developed. The modular contents of the e-learning-database are interactively linked to the according lecture files and e-learning units (clinical cases, short video sequences, and scientific articles).

The acceptance and learning strategies of all dental students since 2008 were evaluated with an additional data sheet at the end of the semester's final exams.

Results: Approximately 50% of all students think e-learning is extremly reasonable. 40 % like it, ~9% have doubts and 1% are not interested. ~ 89% of all students would prefer a constant upgrade of the internet based E-learning with integrated self-testing. The percentage of students using the internet based learning constantly rises (Graph).

Conclusion: The broad acceptance and demand on the part of the students show the development potential of the new e-learning project due to fast topic-oriented inquiry of the learning content without time and local limitations as well as direct determination of the individually needed knowledge conditions. In the next step of the advancement in close co-operation with the students the structure/modification of the data base will be enhanced and the interactive self testing will be enlarged.