Comparison of Lecture and Team-Based Learning methods, a Novel Strategy in Dental Education: Experience of Yazd Dental School

Team- based learning (TBL) is a student- based teaching method in which students participate in teamwork and application of learning concepts to problem- solving. It has been widely proposed in the education of medical and dental education. This study describes the experience of implementation and evaluation of TBL and lecture- based teaching findings on dental education.

This interventional study was conducted in 2022 including dentistry students at Yazd dental school. They were randomly divided into two separate groups, traditional and team- based learning (TBL). A questionnaire was administered to measure the knowledge of the students toward chronic orofacial pain, at the beginning of the study, immediately after the completion of the training, and 4 months after training. The average knowledge score were analyzed by Mann- Whitney and Wilcoxon tests through SPSS. The significance level in this study was considered 0.05.

Of 23 participants, 6 students were males (26%) and 17 were females (74%) students. There was no significant difference in the level of awareness according to gender, native status, and marital status. Results show that students` knowledg  score in traditional education group  pertaining to chronic orofacial pain., 4 months after education were significantly lower in comparison with the immediate after- education group (P=0.027). The scores of the TBL group were significantly higher in the long term than the traditional education group (p=0.027). Average satisfaction with the TBL group was 7.09±10.56.

Based on the results of the present study, it seems that TBL has a positive effect on long- term learning. The short- term knowledge score was significantly higher in the TBL group in comparison with the traditional education method.