key: cord-0073973-bu8ltsq1
authors: Yu, Chuan-Hang
title: Dental students’ perception on the entire online courses of domiciliary dentistry and dysphagia curricula during the COVID-19 pandemic
date: 2022-01-24
journal: J Dent Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.jds.2022.01.013
sha: 4d2fd3717056caf1ce05c2dc9470a666c17e7252
doc_id: 73973
cord_uid: bu8ltsq1

nan

In Taiwan, the population of people aged 65 years and over will be >20% of the total population by the year 2025. 1 Elderly people are prone to have chronic illness, functional impairment, or swallowing problems that may lead to reduced mobility or aspiration pneumonia. Data have shown that ~3% of the elderly in Taiwan by September 2021 had a severe or profound disability. 2 Data also demonstrated that pneumonia is the third leading cause of death among the elderly in 2019, and the mortality rate increases in the higher aged group. 3 Therefore, the provision of comprehensive dental care for the elderly is essential for the rapidly aging society in Taiwan. The implementation of the geriatric curriculum in dental education is a way to enhance the knowledge of healthcare providers on caring for the elderly. After completing the course and final examination, a survey was conducted for the dental students' satisfaction with the entire online course. According to the results of this survey, the satisfaction rates were 99%, 95%, and 100% for online teaching videos, online videos on handson practice, and the overall online course, respectively. Besides, 49%

(39/80) responses favored the total online lecture with physical practice, followed by 27% (22/80) for the entire online course (Table 1) .

Students were assigned to submit their learning notes in handwriting to enhance learning efficacy. Two students mentioned that handwriting helped them systematically outline and organize the lectures. One student suggested providing a learning checklist to strengthen their learning quality. These were important feedback to improve learning efficacy of the entire online course.

The COVID-19 pandemic has lasted for two years and seems to be far from over. This has a pivotal impact on education patterns, with a paradigm shift from physical lectures to online learning. Although it is not easy to deliver an operational course through e-learning, it is necessary during a severe epidemic. A high-level opaque projector (rather than a webcam) is needed to achieve high-quality images of the operational videos. I choose IPEVO V4K Pro (IPEVO Company, Taipei, Taiwan) as an online demonstration tool for its relatively low cost and freedom of access. Although only one student specified a minor problem of the object focus, I recommended a higher-level projector, the IPEVO VZ-R HDMI/USB Dual Mode Visualizer, for better image quality.

Despite positive feedback on the entire online course from the students, 49% of them favored the total online lecture with physical practice.

Physical practice teaching is mandatory for effective clinical skill learning whenever possible. Therefore, improving the learning efficacy for clinical J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f skills and developing a well-constructed hybrid teaching method that includes physical and online learning in Taiwan's dental education is necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author has no conflicts of interest relevant to this article. 

National Development Council

Cause of Death Statistics, Ministry of Health and Welfare

Telemedicine as an effective tool for dental service during COVID-19 pandemic

Dental education practices during COVID-19: a scoping review

This work was partly supported by a grant from the Higher Education