Advertisement

Technology, Knowledge and Learning

, Volume 22, Issue 2, pp 185–197 | Cite as

Clinical Skills Acquisition: Rethinking Assessment Using a Virtual Haptic Simulator

  • Arash Shahriari-Rad
  • Margaret Cox
  • Mark Woolford
Original research
First Online:

Abstract

This study was the fourth study (Study 4) of four consecutive cohort studies (2007/2008, 2008/2009, 2009/2010 and 2010/2011) of over 520 dental undergraduate first year students at King’s College London as part of their 5-year undergraduate programme. The study reported in this paper is a 2-year longitudinal investigation of 140 first year students (and subsequent second year) who were being trained to develop their clinical dental skills. In this study students used both the traditional Phantom-head laboratory and a haptically simulated virtual reality systems (HapTEL) laboratory to develop their basic clinical skills. Pre- and post-psychometric tests were used to measure their spatial reasoning and manipulation skills. The test scores and traditional clinical examinations results showed significant improvement in their psychomotor skills especially in the area of spatial awareness within a 3-months period (one term) of pre-clinical training. The results showed that using psychometric tests can reveal specific skill development amongst students not identified by traditional assessment methods. This study complements the previous studies in showing the development of psychomotor skills by practising virtual reality simulators can be monitored and measured through stages of skill acquisition more accurately and objectively. These results confirmed the consistency of skill improvement through the three phases of skill acquisition although more analysis is needed of the specific types of tests which reliably measured these skill phases. The result of this research could therefore inform the development of formative and summative dental clinical skills’ assessment to measure and monitor the student’s psychomotor training with more regular and instant feedback in an objective way using computers along with the traditional Phantom-head mannequin.

Keywords

Virtual reality simulator Haptic Psychomotor skills Clinical skills Psychometric tests Assessment 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by: King’s College London Dental Institute. The hapTEL Project was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Technology Enhanced Learning Programme. Appreciations to Dr. Barry F. Quinn and Dr. Jonathan P. San Diego and other staff and students involved in this research.

References

  1. Ackerman, P. L. (1988). Determinants of individual differences during skill acquisition: Cognitive abilities and information processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 117(3), 288–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Bakr, M. M., Massey, W., & Alexander, H. (2014). Students’ evaluation of a 3DVR haptic device (Simodont®). Does early exposure to haptic feedback during preclinical dental education enhance the development of psychomotor skills? International Journal of Dental Clinics, 6(2), 1–7.Google Scholar
  3. Botden, S. M. B. I., Torab, F., Buzink, S. N., & Jakimowicz, J. J. (2007). The importance of haptic feedback in laparoscopic suturing training and the additive value of virtual reality simulation. Surgical Endoscopy, 22(5), 1214–1222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Cox, M. J., Shahriari-Rad, A., Quinn, B., Woolford, M., & San Diego, J. P. (2015). Haptic simulator enhances students’ clinical skills over four years. Journal of Dental Research, 94(3), 1990.Google Scholar
  5. de Boer, I. R., Lagerweij, M. D., Wesselink, P. R., & Vervoorn, J. M. (2015). Evaluation of the appreciation of virtual teeth with and without pathology. European Journal of Dental Education, 19(2), 87–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. de Peralta, T. L., Ramaswamy, V., Karl, E., Van Tubergen, E., McLean, M. E., & Fitzgerald, M. (2017). Caries removal by first-year dental students: A multisource competency assessment strategy for reflective practice. Journal of Dental Education, 81(1), 87–95.Google Scholar
  7. Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance (basic concepts in psychology). Oxford: Brooks and Cole.Google Scholar
  8. Grantcharov, T. P. (2006). Virtual reality simulation in training and assessment of laparoscopic skills. European Clinics in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2(4), 197–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Ifenthaler, D., Sampson, D. G., & Spector, J. M. (2015). Interactions between cognitive psychology, educational technology, and computing in the digital age. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 20, 129–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Moorthy, K., Munz, Y., Sarker, S. K., & Darzi, A. (2003). Objective assessment of technical skills in surgery. British Medical Journal, 327(7422), 1032–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Quinn, F., Keogh, P., McDonald, A., & Hussey, D. (2003). A study comparing the effectiveness of conventional training and virtual reality simulation in the skills acquisition of junior dental students. European Journal of Dental Education, 7(4), 164–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. San Diego, J., Cox, M. J., Quinn, B. F. A., Newton, J. T., Banerjee, A., & Woolford, M. (2012). Researching haptics in higher education: The complexity of developing haptics virtual learning systems and evaluating its impact on students’ learning. Journal of Computers and Education, 59, 156–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. San Diego, J. P., Newton, T., Quinn, B. F., Cox, M. J., & Woolford, M. J. (2014). Levels of agreement between student and staff assessments of clinical skills in performing cavity preparation in artificial teeth. European Journal of Dental Education, 18(1), 58–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Shahriari-Rad, A. (2012). The effects of a virtual reality simulator on formative and summative assessment methods for dental clinical skills. Bulletin du GIRSO (Group Int Rech Sci Stomatol Odontol), 51(3), 17–18.Google Scholar
  15. Shahriari-Rad, A. (2014). Enhancement of clinical skills assessment using haptic technology. PhD Thesis, King’s College London, University of London.Google Scholar
  16. Suksudaj, N. (2010). What factors influence learning of psychomotor skills by dental students? PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide.Google Scholar
  17. Tregunna, R. L., Bultitude, M. F., & Khan, M. S. (2012). Modern concepts on cognito-psychomotor skill development. Urolithiasis (pp. 827–836). London: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Urbankova, A., & Engebretson, S. P. (2011). The use of haptics to predict preclinic operative dentistry performance and perceptual ability. Journal of Dental Education, 75(12), 1548–1557.Google Scholar
  19. Wang, D., Zhao, S., Li, T., Zhang, Y., & Wang, X. (2015). Preliminary evaluation of a virtual reality dental simulation system on drilling operation. Journal of Biomedical Material and Engineering, 26(1), 747–756.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Oral Health Services Research and Dental Public HealthKing’s College London Dental InstituteLondonUK

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options