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How does Dental Students’ expertise influence their clinical performance and Perceived Task load in a virtual Dental Lab?

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Abstract

The purposes of this study were (1) to introduce a virtual dental lab designed to support students’ virtual clinical examinations in a dentistry program in South Korea and (2) to determine how dental students’ levels of expertise (low, medium, or high) influence their clinical performance in terms of dwell time on each tooth location, total examination time, and perceived task load in the virtual dental lab. A total of 93 students participated in the study. Participants were assigned to one of three groups based on their expertise levels and performed virtual reality simulation tasks of detecting and diagnosing dental caries in two clinical cases. The outcome variables were participants’ clinical examination performance (total dwell time on the virtual dental mirror and total examination time) and perceived task load (separated into six subcomponents: mental demands, physical demands, temporal demands, effort, performance, and frustration). The results suggest that the level of expertise significantly affected the performance of dental examinations in all areas except the anterior maxillary teeth. Both total dwell time on the dental mirror and total examination time were significantly shorter for the high expertise group than for the medium and low expertise groups. In addition, the high expertise group rated task load significantly lower for mental demands (p < .05, Cohen’s d = 0.70) and effort (p < .05, Cohen’s d = 0.75) than did the low expertise group.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A5B8070203).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Chonnam National University, 77, Yongbong-ro, Buk-gu, 61186, Gwangju, South Korea

    Eunbyul Yang

  2. Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, University of South Florida, Tampa, United States

    Sanghoon Park Ph.D.

  3. Institute of Educational Research, Department of Education, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea

    Jeeheon Ryu Ph.D.

  4. Institute of Educational Research, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea

    Taehyeong Lim Ph.D.

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  1. Eunbyul Yang
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Correspondence to Jeeheon Ryu Ph.D..

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Yang, E., Park, S., Ryu, J. et al. How does Dental Students’ expertise influence their clinical performance and Perceived Task load in a virtual Dental Lab?. J Comput High Educ 35, 245–271 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-022-09314-5

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