“Is internet useful as an educational tool for teaching of dentistry?”

Objectives, Internet use in clinical dentistry and education is increasing. The aim of this study was to evaluate usefulness of Internet as an educational tool for dental teaching. Methods, A course in orofacial pain and temporomandibular disorders, based on 16 two-hour lessons, was delivered, during a three-month period in 2001, in a class of 60 senior dental students (22 females and 38 males, age 22-31 years), at University of Milan, Italy. Successive lessons alternated, besides speaking, slides, multimedia (video, CD-ROM), and Internet. Two weeks after the end of the course, a questionnaire was administered to the students. The survey included questions about the subjective satisfaction's degree and previous experience in the Internet use. Results, A 100% response rate was obtained. Participants exhibited socio-cultural characteristics similar to national averages of dental students. A percentage of 71.7% of them reported previous use of Internet. Responses on Internet usefulness as an educational tool were 93.3% positive and 5.0%% negative. In comparing Internet to other educational media, 55.0% of students felt it was better than other methods; 40.0% reported video and CD-ROM as the best media, and 5.0% preferred conventional teaching. The Internet's main strength was judged to be the high interactivity (88.3%), its main weakness the short mean connection time (approximately 15 min) used during lessons (48.3%). The opportunity to use Internet interactively was judged a major characteristic (86.7%) to improve the quality of learning. Conclusions, The findings of this study suggest that incorporating Internet use with traditional teaching methods may be useful in the education of university dental students.