Methods to teach and evaluate dental clinical skills using Haptics

Abstract

Haptics is the study of human touch and interaction with the external environment. This paper presents Stage 1 of a 4 year project, funded by the UK's ESRC/EPSRC and JISC, to develop and evaluate haptic on-line devices in dental education. Stage 1 focuses on designing the haptic devices, and the educational evaluation strategies to measure the impact on teaching and learning.

Objectives: To conduct a requirements analysis to design the haptic devices;

To identify the research methods for measuring the impact of haptics

Methods: Focus group discussions amongst researchers and university clinical teachers to develop a taxonomy of skills and concepts; identify the dental requirements and workable algorithms for the haptic devices; review of past evidence to develop research methods to measure and analyse the impact of haptics.

Results: The initial requirement analysis identified simulated dental procedures: Class I cavity preparation; dental and periodontal probing; scaling and local anaesthesia.

The proposed investigation structure was devised:

• Simple haptic device vs traditional training

• Haptic device with feedback vs traditional

• Haptic device replay facility vs traditional

Evaluation methods were developed that measure:

• students' previous skills knowledge,

• 3-dimensional perceptions;

• accuracy of cavity preparation;

• manual dexterity skills

• attitudes to using IT

• institutional influences on integrating IT into the curriculum.

Conclusions: Haptics devices can simulate the tasks traditionally taught through phantom head laboratory work, with feedback of sound, colour change, bur rotation speed, torque, hand-piece vibration and orientation. Effective research evaluation requires theoretical educational models of pedagogical reasoning and institutional factors with quantitative tests to measure 3-D perceptions; level of immersion in the virtual environment and qualitative measures such as video analysis to measure the human computer interaction and impact of the situational context.