2016 BDS graduate Roshni Patel recently presented a poster of her work at the conference of the Association of Dental Education, Europe (ADEE) held at the School of Dentistry, University of Barcelona. Her elective project was supervised by Miss Nikki Atack and entitled “The learning preferences of undergraduate dental students in the development of orthodontic clinical skills”. The aim of her elective was to investigate the learning preferences amongst undergraduate dental students to develop the structure of a learning tool that could enhance the current teaching of orthodontic clinical skills at Bristol Dental Hospital (BDH). This study consisted of three questionnaires, designed to establish the learning preferences amongst students for clinical orthodontic skills and if more learning support is required. The results suggested that there is a need to further support students at BDH with their learning of how to fit and adjust fixed appliances. The learning preferences of students for these clinical skills, is multi-modal in nature and future changes to current teaching and development of new learning aids should aim to account for these differences.
The findings of Roshni’s elective will underpin future development of the undergraduate orthodontic programme at the University of Bristol, including the creation of e-tutorials and video demonstrations to consolidate the knowledge gained during orthodontic tutorials.
Following on from Roshi’s elective, Dr Andrea Waylen, Dr Julie Williams and Professor Tony Ireland then submitted an abstract to ADEE entitled “How do our students want to learn orthodontic clinical skills? Listening and responding to the student voice: an elective project.” Dr Andrea Waylen was invited to present her team’s analysis of dental students’ perceptions of the Behavioural and Social Science curriculum during the free stage presentations of the conference. More information on this can be found in the article in the News section of the Dental School website.