Teaching research methods to undergraduate dental students

摘要

The provision of undergraduate statistics teaching varies across UK dental schools, but some challengesare faced in all schools. These include the need to (i) demonstrate the relevance of statistics to dentistry,(ii) address the phenomenon of statistical anxiety likely to be experienced, and (iii) deliver the teachingwith a limited number of statistically trained staff. Our objective was to design a research methodscourse that combined epidemiology and statistics teaching for undergraduates at Bristol Dental School(University of Bristol) that was clinically relevant, focused on concepts and interpretation rather thancalculation, and was sustainable, using new technology to enhance learning. The research methodscourse was introduced in 2008, extensively developed over the next two years based on student and tutorfeedback, and has run with only minor updates ever since. The aim of the course is to introduce year 2dental students to the skills needed to practice evidence-based dentistry, i.e. understand and criticallyappraise published research. Basic epidemiological concepts, different types of study design,summarising and interpreting data, and choosing appropriate statistical analyses are covered. The courseis introduced by a face-to-face lecture. This emphasises the relevance to future careers, and pre-emptsthe feelings of statistical anxiety by presenting evidence that exam results for this course are notassociated with having achieved an A-level in mathematics. The rest of the course is delivered using theflipped classroom approach. Didactic teaching is in the form of nine e-lectures, each lasting 20-25minutes. These are split into chapters to allow easy navigation, and include pop-up questions. Smallgroup (up to 10 students) structured tutorials (one per e-lecture) are used to reinforce the materialcovered in the e-lectures, drawing on real clinical examples from research publications. They areinteractive, and also include e-voting quizzes to allow the tutors and students to gauge the level ofunderstanding that is being achieved. At the end of the course there is a revision session and writtenassessment, which must be passed before students can progress to year 3 of the dental degree.Approximately 70 students take the course each year, split into eight groups, and tutorials are based onpre-prepared materials. Tutoring on this course provides an attractive opportunity to gain teachingexperience, with only a modest investment in time. Therefore, it has always been possible to recruitenough statisticians or epidemiologists in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Bristol to act astutors. At least 89% of the students have passed the exam on first sitting each year, and all students havepassed their re-sit exam. Marks ranged from 50-86% in 2019, and similar ranges were seen in previousyears. Student feedback is consistently high, with virtually all students rating all components of thecourse at least satisfactory, and high percentages rating them good or excellent (e-lectures and tutorialswere rated to be good or excellent by 72% and 95% of the students respectively in 2019). Externalexaminers have been very complimentary, and only ever requested minor changes. Hence it has beenpossible to run a sustainable research methods course that engages students’ interest and producesexcellent learning outcomes.