Medical students’ perception of an online dental trauma course in medical education

• Published in: Australian endodontic journal Vol. 48; no. 1; pp. 51 - 57
• Main Authors: Yeng, Thai, O’Sullivan, Anthony J., Shulruf, Boaz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Australia Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.04.2022
• Subjects: Australia; Cross-Sectional Studies; dental education; dental trauma; Education, Medical; Endodontics; Factor analysis; Humans; Medical education; Medical students; online learning; Perception; Reproducibility of Results; Students, Medical; Trauma; Australia; dental education; medical education; dental trauma; online learning; perception
• ISSN: 1329-1947; 1747-4477
• DOI: 10.1111/aej.12601

Background With dental trauma education not commonly offered in medicine programmes, offering an online learning course may fill the knowledge deficiency for medical students. The aim of this study is to evaluate medical students’ perceptions of an online dental trauma course. Material and Methods This was a cross‐sectional questionnaire study conducted among medical students at an Australian University. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the underlying factor structure within the items. Cronbach’s alpha was employed to estimate the factors’ reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess construct validity; SPSS v22 and AMOIS v22 were used for data analyses. Results Exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct factors: 'visual' and 'content', with excellent reliability for visual (Cronbach's alpha = 0.911) and good reliability for content (Cronbach's alpha = 0.755). Conclusions This research supports the findings that medical students perceived the online dental trauma course to be easily understood for self‐learning this topic.