Smart glasses help dental students to learn more effectively
Real-time feedback and the ability to ask questions improve learning.
Smart glasses were an effective tool in enhancing the teaching of dental students about oral and dental examinations, a study has found.
The study’s authors said that one of the necessary skills for students cited by the Association of American Medical Colleges was the ability to “perform a head and neck examination that includes recognition of caries, periodontal disease, dental erosion from eating disorders, cleft palate and other anomalies, mucosal changes, and indications of oral cancer.”
Ten final year medical students volunteered to take part in the study. They were split into two groups of five; one group using smart glasses to perform an examination and the other not.
The smart glasses used by the students had a high quality camera, voice commands, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities as well as two way, video conferencing capabilities.
During the procedure, the study’s principal investigator provided immediate verbal feedback using a laptop computer connected to the smart glasses headset.
Student feedback of their learning experience was found to be more favourable in the group using smart glasses.
“One of the key components of hands-on learning is real-time feedback and the ability to ask questions and smart glasses can help facilitate this,” said the authors.
The authors did note limitations of the study, including the small sample size, and recommended that a future study should have “a more robust study design such as a randomised controlled trial”.