Evaluation of Dental Students' Perception of E-Learning and the Effectiveness of Interactive Learning tools; A Single-group Study of Clinical Biochemistry

Biochemistry is one of the basic and difficult courses that teachers have to spend a lot of time on. With the emergence of new technologies, blended learning is possible. The aim of the study was to investigate the attitude of dental students towards e-Learning and blended learning interactive tools. This quasi-experimental pre-test post-test study was performed on 60 dental students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences who were selected by census method. A researcher-made questionnaire including 19 questions on attitudes toward e-Learning (Attitude about the nature, application, and consequences) and 9 questions measuring interactive tools on a six-point Likert scale with a cut-off line of 3.5 were used. The validity of two questionnaires was confirmed by 10 experts’ views. The reliability of the attitude questionnaire was 0.957 and for interactive tools was 0.91 Cronbach's alpha. Data were analyzed with SPSS-22 software and paired t-tests, one-sample t-tests, independent t-tests, and ANOVA. The total score of attitude after the intervention was significantly different compared to the pre-test (P=0.004). In subcomponents; for concept of e-Learning (P<0.001), and its application (P=0.004) showed a significant improvement. The most desirable interactive tools of blended learning are podcasts (M=4.14+1.36), presentation of short lectures (M=4.14+1.52), questions-answers in the classroom (M=3.94+1.51), and multimedia (M=3.78+1.55) to be significantly more effective. There is no significant difference was observed in results by gender, grade, and computer access (P>0.05). It seems that blended learning using the strengths of face-to-face and online learning can be a better way of education. In addition, live teacher-student interactions provide more opportunities for good instruction.