Application of Flipped Classroom in Oral Diagnosis Courses

Objectives: After the traditional classroom teaching of clinical subjects, the dental clerks still cannot successfully apply theoretical knowledge to make correct clinical assessment or diagnosis in facing patients. In order to improve students' learning interest and learning outcomes, this project adopted action research methods to respond to problems found in the teaching field and developed a variety of innovative and interactive teaching strategies to flip the classroom.
Methods: A total of 88 fifth-year dental students participated in this course. The teaching methods included classroom teaching, E-learning, electronic interactive media, history-taking practice assignments, homework review, teacher-student role-playing , rubric peer feedback, and group case discussion. Students' learning performance was analyzed by paper-and-pencil test scores and peer rating scales (rubrics). Teaching feedback questionnaires were used to analyze whether the teaching method improves students' learning interest. Both narrative statistics and qualitative analysis were applied.
Results: The teacher-centered role-playing integrated homework review methods, randomized oral seminar reports and asking questions randomly in the class were all very popular, they were helpful in improving concentration, and also indicated the importance of active participation in learning.
Conclusions: The conclusions of this project are as follows: 1. Students agreed that history-taking practice assignments were very necessary and they would pay high attention to the review of homework. 2. Multiple teaching methods, especially various teacher-centered interactive professional teaching activities, were most helpful for clinical reasoning training and most attractive, they could not be replaced by online courses or standard patients. 3. To build an appropriate case practice database is very important for the teaching of oral diagnosis.