Serious game as oral histology learning strategy for undergraduate dental students; crossover randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Oral histology is perceived by dental students as a challenging subject and often struggle to recognize the long-term relevance of understanding the cells and tissues at the microscopic level. Serious games have been reported to have a positive effect on student cognitive skills and learning motivation. However, there is still a limited amount of research supporting the effectiveness of serious games as a learning method in dentistry. The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of serious game of HistoRM as a complementary learning strategy for oral histology.

METHODS

The study design was a crossover randomized controlled trial. A total of 74 first year dental students of Universitas Indonesia participated in the study and divided into 2 groups. Study intervention included HistoRM game for 3 days followed by a combination of HistoRM and script-based handouts for another 4 days. The groups represented different intervention sequences. Evaluation was performed using pre-test, post-test on day 3 and 7 and a questionnaire.

RESULTS

The data showed significant improvement of student cognitive skills (p < 0.001) and it was influenced by the number of game missions completed. Students who completed the whole 15 missions have a higher day-7 post-tests scores (p = 0.03). Perception of dental students on HistoRM was positive in all domains tested, the learning content, games and learning experience domains. Immediate feedback given after each gameplay helped the students understand the subject matters.

CONCLUSION

Serious game of HistoRM effectively improved students' understanding of oral histology learning outcome and provided more interesting learning experiences. This innovative learning can be recommended as a complementary learning strategy of oral histology for dental students.

The COVID-19 e-lective: using innovation to manage disrupted medical student clinical placements

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work, spend, live, and learn. The impact was felt in the health sector where hospitals cancelled elective surgery, put on hold outpatient services, and implemented new social distancing procedures and telehealth systems, to enable hospitals to increase bed capacity. For medical students, these factors meant significant disruption to their clinical placements, remote delivery of their education, cessation of international and interstate placements, complicated by significant travel restrictions and border closures. There were concerns that final year students might be unable to graduate that year due to this lack of clinical exposure.

INNOVATION

As a result of this disruption in late March 2020 we developed an innovative 6 week 'COVID-19 e-lective' rotation, consisting of online modules, virtual clinical tutorials and a COVID project totalling the equivalent of 200 h of work.

RESULTS

An evaluation was undertaken that found it to be remarkably successful in meeting the students' learning needs and alleviating concerns about disrupted placements. It was also conducted during 2021 for all Year 4 students to help expand clinical placement opportunities.

OUTCOMES

This paper describes the e-lective, its innovations, its challenges, and its evaluation findings, for others to learn from.